Unexplained

I’ve only once in my six decades,
years spent in many lands and islands,
heard a crow fly to and caw at me.
It flew ahead and cawed from a second tree,
Then flew ahead to a fence post,
cawed a third time as we came close.
Then flew away. This in the driveway
of a well-treed hotel outside Nairobi.

Kenyans have no tradition of the crow
as a messenger of death, but we sure do.
We checked the time: 1:05 pm.
As it turns out, that was the moment when,
in the night in British Columbia,
my favourite in-law, my children’s grandmother
died.