a most curious visit

A very unusual thing just happened.

Earlier this morning I found out that my friend, David Hardy, is finally dead. My sweet friend who I met in the men's locker room between our radiation treatments died on Saturday after battling cancer for nearly a year and a half. But a few minutes ago, while hanging my white laundry on the clothesline in our back patio, with not one cloud in the sky, a crow flew down between the buildings that surround our backyard. The crow perched on the five and a half foot tall metal fence that separates the neighboring backyard. It was no more than fifteen feet away from me, facing me at eye level. It remained there for a good 15-20 seconds, even after I cawed at it (which is something I like to do now with crows), before flying up and disappearing into the thicket of leaves from the tree beside it. The entire time, I continued to peer over at it while hanging my socks and listening to McCoy Tyner’s piano solo on John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things” through my iPod. Shortly after it flapped up into the tree, the crow flew off, above the roof of our house, playfully chased for the briefest of seconds by a tiny brown sparrow before it settled on the edge of the roof of the dilapidated building behind our house. While I looked up at it, it almost appeared to be peering down at me before it disappeared. Seconds later, I saw the crow flying south, just above the backyards of the neighboring houses.

Besides the timing, what makes this most unusual is that this is the first time I’ve ever seen a crow descend down to our patio. Our backyard——as well as the two neighboring ones——is kind of a cove that is especially popular amongst pigeons. Like an oasis from the city's bustle. I see and hear these pigeons all the time from my bedroom, cooing to each other, flapping from roof to roof, or strutting about in a mating dance of sorts on the house behind us. Doves and English sparrows occasionally join them, but this is the first time any bird came this close to me during the year that I have lived here. To boot, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a crow hang out behind our house. On a few occasions, I’ve seen a small group of crows perching on the wires that crisscross the houses on our block of Lexington Street.

Thank god I’m no longer scared of them! I used to feel haunted by them since I thought I always saw or heard them when I had cancer, no matter what town or city I was in. I rather like them now, more than ever, secretly wish I could have one as a companion to fly above me while I bicycle around like the German ski-jumper featured in Werner Herzog's breathtaking documentary The Great Ecstasy of the Sculptor Steiner.

Since the crow left, I’ve been looking out my bedroom window, hoping it will return. But its message has already been delivered.