Pioneer Square Vignette No.6

I saw a dead crow on the ground. I stopped and Friedrich sniffed. It was a baby, limp with flat feathers, an eye gone.

It was in the middle of the sidewalk on a decline. On Seneca, I think. As I walked west toward Elliott Bay. A group of people dressed in slacks and skirts and heels and ties talked and laughed and diverged to go around us. Me and Friedrich. Standing there, mourning the baby crow. They glanced at it and then at me but just kept walking and smiling.

Callous.

Two crows cawed powerless from high green leaves against August blue. I worried that now they hate me.

Crows remember people.

They saw me, looking at their dead baby. They watched me, as gently as I could – but no matter because grief knows no gentleness – as I lifted it off the sidewalk with the tip of my shoe, open-toed, pink leather with nails polished. I kicked it a few feet into the margin, soft with dirt and green with bracken, under a bush.

It was the right thing to do.

I felt sad and walked away. They cawed, hopping branches behind me.