Clattering Dervishes

Midday of a late summer day
the vast bowl of the sky gleams
pewter, a shield of high-flung cloud
guarding the sun above. Midday,
but in the dry, green-canopied
forest it is dark and cool, a
ripple of breeze shifting leaves
languidly. Stillness prevails.

Until, cutting the tranquility
a penetrating, protracted hoot of an
owl sounds, waits, repeats itself,
waits again and continues to break
the silent wood of its lassitude. A
replying caw from a single crow in
flight, a contrapuntal challenge.

The owl's territorial presumption
soon develops into a murder of crows
hysterically mounting a frenzied
chorus. The owl's softly reverberant
hoot drowned in the raucous
plenitude of derision and anger.

Targeting its perch, there on a
bare broken limb with ample
sight lines into the forest depths,
stolidly unperturbed by the storm
unleashed upon its unblinking head;
the crows, black and windborne
clattering like whirling dervishes.