He said he’d been a crow in a former life, but
I thought he was putting me on.
However, he did look a bit birdlike, only in an
acceptable, handsome way.
By chance, some cawing crows, about twenty,
landed in a nearby tree.
To humor Marcus’s nonsense, I said, “What are
those crows in the tree talking about?”
He said, “They are talking about the gold buttons on
your brown jacket and want to steal one.”
I laughed at his nonsense and heard the crows
cawing frantically in the tree.
Then they flew over my head as if they were going
to attack me.
While I was fearfully distracted, a sneaky crow snatched
one of my gold buttons off my jacket and flew away
with the other crows following him, and I wondered if
if Marcus really understood them —
or if their theft of the gold button was just an
extraordinary coincidence.
Bob Boyd