Avery Bowser - Issue 34

Avery was born in Canada and grew up in London, with Northern Ireland his adult home. He studied philosophy and literature at Ulster University (Coleraine) before becoming a social worker. Active in his profession and the voluntary & community sector, he currently leads a fostering service for a national children’s charity. Avery is a member of Portglenone Writers, having joined online during lockdown, and much preferring the face to face world that has returned. Writing poetry is generally his first choice. Avery lives with his family in the country outside Bellaghy, where the rooks are always gathering and calling.

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Crow Talk

My gaze from the sky surveys your field, next to our wood. I brook stream and lane. One bird black cloud, your friendly neighbourhood carrion carrier. Pestilence pusher, doom bringer – summon me if you think you can, for I’m no one’s familiar. Croak cough, half hoot – you heard me. I saw you laughing at my hoppity walk on the verge, where the rich pickings live. Colonel Sanders and chips. You called me ‘crow’ when I am rook. But I have the last laugh. You think we’re all the same, when I’m the one who was on the roof yesterday, the fence the day before. In the sky last week and in the snow at Christmas. I live here though you do not really know it. We scoot when you’re watching but laugh at your raggedy fake men and rave to bangers when you’re not looking. Unbounded. Unbidden. Unbiddable. Getting late - I need no watch to tell me it’s time to gather. Damn starlings and their murmuring – they get all the plaudits. Amateurs. You marvel at the crescent swoopers and the high gliders, but I’m the real flier here. My tattered ruffles are the chaos theory of flight in actual motion – no one rides the cross wind and the storm like me. No one dares.  And nothing beats the dishevelled beauty of us, me and my mates, a shamble of rooks, tumbling over the Moyola to roost, a legion of black match heads across the upmost bare branches. Dark fire, this band of brothers, and sisters, an exultant chorus of cacophony, we rasp and croak to the oncoming night. No matter how close you come, with tag or minicam, my uncharted world will always be beyond your reach. I have no window to my future or yours, only to say that I will always be your unknown familiar.