Prelude - The Forgetting

Out here, far away from our origins, where the stars beat their drums of light across the clear blackness, here in the outer regions of things, where the world pushes into new found spaces, leaving behind unexplained traces of wonder, out here matter vibrates and thickens. Here, the taught web of magic stretches and the miracle of Being becomes thin, so thin it’s almost invisible to us. Almost.

Out here, we forget ourselves.

Inside the noise of the world, we forget that we stood together in different forms at the endless beginning. We lose track of the tiny changes that eons and ages have brought, the minute alterations that infinite orbits have sought. All the endless atoms we are, the molecules that build us and then quickly fall apart, written and posted letters of change. All of this weight, this carbon slated universe, it fogs out our history, mists the memories of our minds.

We have dropped veils across our eyes like confused saints; our ears have long stopped listening to the glory of the days, our skin deadened to the bristles of eternity. We have built towering walls to keep magic out, we have dropped filters around us to keep the magic thin. All the while we pray for love to enter our lives.

Out here we succumb to the drub, out here on the edge of the universe, the real world applies itself in rigid cycles, dreary cycles, like the days of the week. We long for escape.


Prelude II - Before

But once, before the time of God and gods, long before the Angels flew and the Elves disappeared and the Fairies found homes deep underground, long before the stables of Unicorns and Minotaur’s were herded away, and magic was found and forgotten and found and forgotten again, before animals lost their human tongues and trees stopped talking to Men, before Ten moons became One and the Sun stopped roaming the land, before all these things,

                                                       
                                                      Being

                                                    simply was.


An eternity of pulsing possibility, an endless, timeless, infinite energy.

Brilliant spectrums of light-dark colours, formless presence, a rainbow of alchemy in a void of uncertainty, imbued with calmness and chaos, roughness and wisdom, with limitless flat spaceless expanses, always moving in perfect stillness. Endless. Never bothering beginning, no thought of ending, the circle of Life held nothing, and nothing sat outside its boundless boundaries, oh but how I go on, for if you remember, it was before all these words, for it was you.

And through Beings synergy, inside its breathing living ness it did seek to manifest. For it was Creation, and Creation’s love is to Create and through the perfection of this Love and this ceaseless yearning for all life, it created.


And its first creation was Crow.


                                            The Song of the Crow



Being Of Crow Creation


At first, a single idea, first thought becomes clear. Built of desire and dark vapoured mist, woven and platted with a black viscous twist. Crow poured himself in, a ghost of his shadow, and Crow was then Saintly and Crow was then Hallow. His shudders lessened as energy thickened and his birth was a rapture as his first breath beckoned. Crow cried out from the bloody, burst of birth, and the lump of becoming, which created his girth. The rustle of an edge, and a feather came to sight, a pearly ringed eye, and gleaming bright sight. Another it seeks, and at once a sharp beak. And from this mouth a tiny tweak.  

And from inside the All, there sat Crow...

                                                                ...black and sleek.

And Crow grew, and became one with the light in his soul, for his Soul was his Song and his Song was the All. The Song sat inside him in colour and rhyme, of strange twisted portents and dark ruptured signs, and the crystal white energy of yet older times. His Song was of visions and of glimmering spaces, of myths and of legends and of all of life’s traces. It sights and its smell, its heavens and hells, and all of the stories that he could now tell. Crow’s Song hummed and it wheeled, it gurgled and bubbled and at the back of his throat, Crow felt the Song rumble. Out to the edges of his beak did it go and sat there sometimes awaiting our Crow. And Crow would feel it and love it so.

Inside his beak it stayed. He knew of its essence. Crow cared and coveted and protected it so, like a loving archer protecting his bow. Like fear protects love, (or so it thinks so…) Crow’s beautiful Song was the map of the All, an atlas of longing wrapped in a Song. And Crow held this Song deeply and justly at night, for he dare not Sing it, instead held it tight. For the Song was all life and he dare not risk strife, for Crow feared that the Singing was the losing of life.

And so Crow flew. And he flew with this Song of Creation in his mouth.




Being of the arrival of the leaving and the dancing

Like a black bullet Crow flew high and true. And the All and the Everything did watch him lift, crying a tear into the great empty rift, for the lost and the found, for the free and the bound, for the loss of his Crow and for his pitch perfect sound.

And Crow did flap his enormous wings, massive fanning weighted things, of perfect black, oiled and tanned, that touched each void edge with magnificent span. And all was a rush, a swooping great flush and Crow made from these motions a peculiar fuss, for his beady eye noted that once his wings floated, at once they sat high and then they sat low, and Crow saw this as Time and thus named it so.

And how Crow did now move his great wings about, giant rhythms of feathers, beating a clout. Through Time and beyond how they did move, in harmony with heaven and a dance and a groove. And the dance of the All became the dance of Crow.

And Crow did love the dance so.

Dancing and dancing around the great void, through white nothingness like a surging black tide, Crow became hungry to express himself more, and quick like a wave a thought came to the fore. A flickering memory, Crow had recalled, that his Song was expression: the Song of the All...it would go well with his dance, this heaven pitched call!

Who could it harm and who could it hurt, to Sing the Song of life loud and true? To shower the void with the joy of his Song. To set out a tune, how could that be wrong?

Crow steadied himself, the Bird coming to rest. The sound was of Angels, and it rose in his chest. The tones left Crow’s mouth, great waves of sound. All was stopped at the sheer joy of the Song. Such beauty, such wonder at the sound of all Sounds. Majesty and glory and clarity it did seek, and it sprung in perfect symmetry from Crow’s massive beak.


The Singing

The rush was immense,
the Big Song intense,
as the great Tune broke,
it spilled with intent.

Great waves of life,
colours, and energies,
Suns and Moons,
and other destinies.

Slivers of pearl,
spider and ghost,
deserts and rivers,
and wet castle moats.

Flowers and plants,
thunder and rain,
and Crow took a deep breath
to sing it again.

Caverns and cliff tops,
white clouds and grass,
silver and gold,
and huge clumps of brass.

Serpents and rainbows,
and angels with wings,
spices and rices,
and birds that could sing,

Mountains and molehills,
symbols and crosses,
gathering treasures,
and all of it’s losses.

Kings of the court,
with rings on their hands,
jesters and jokers,
and great marching bands.


Leaving his mouth,
but only to seek,
last to come out,
were those days of the week,

all dropping and pouring from Crow’s singing beak.


Being Of The Ending

Life leached and it flowed, it ran and it drove. It dripped from his jaw, and ran through his claws, great notions he fought, Crow lost now in thought, dumped on the wave of his very own Song, lost to the pigments of eternities throng.

The whole Universe, sung bold and true, surrounding our Crow - around up and through - was enough to make Crow - who was weary from tune - weep for all Joy, and not a moment to soon. What started in Sin did end with a grin, Crow did not have the heart to sing his Song back, instead gave out a squawk for all he now lacked.


He squawked and he cried and sent his throat dry till the sound of his Song was his squawk in the sky. His Song had been sung his voice now undone, and the spilling was endless, and the Song had become.

(He looked around and saw what he made, and that first thought of himself was beginning to fade……..)


And now the Crow dreams the great worldly dream, sitting on fence posts or powerline seams. Dropping from sills, to pick up his kill, swooping a mouse or picking his louse. But we should all know, life’s not what it seems. Crow knows that he Sung the first Song of the World, and all of this life was his to unfurl.





Epilogue – The Remembering

Sometimes out here, where the discomfort of humanity sits idle, where the magic is thin and stretched, underneath the hustle of the days of the week, when the churn and the toil drop away for just a moment, you can here Crow’s Song. It’s the tune of all life. Its the hum of the Earth. Its the great rhythm that weaves through things and makes them perfect and loving. You can hear it deep in your silences, for it sits in your heart. It hums in the hard rocks, in the wind swept trees, the crashing oceans and dark farming soils. It sings from the bird or the cry of a child. It’s the call of our freedom, The tune of the wild.


So next time you hear Crows ugly squawk, remember his Song and the gift he did sow.  The Song of all things, the Song of the Crow.