Mary Oliver Poem 4 - Crow
In
Owls and Other Fantasies, page 52, Mary Oliver explores the day to day
life of a crow. Every morning, the crow
trots along the beach with the air of positivity and energy, “as though he
found the world brand-new, and wonderful…made especially for him”. The confidence and happiness of the bird continues
as he comes across a plentitude of worms and littered food from humans. The crow talks like a person, saying “oh yes…this
is good, here is breakfast and lunch”, pleased by the pile of food and by the
good world the crow lives in. The words
aren’t there just to explain the crow’s thoughts, but to emphasize their emotion,
being pleasantly surprised and grateful for the bounty provided by the
beach. It’s a very carefree and upbeat
feeling that comes from this bird.
The
narrator expresses the desire to be friends with the crow, but upon approach,
the bird shuns the person with their black cloak of feathers flapping them just
a little bit away. Notably, not too far
down the beach, to obtain some distance from the narrator, is how far the crow
flutters. It’s not a scene of fearful
flight, but one of wariness or perhaps disdain, and I like to think the crow,
if they could speak in this moment, would say “I’m not one for company, leave me
and my food in peace”.
Why
does the narrator wish to befriend this bird of solitude? It’s revealed how the narrator feels in the
last paragraph, as they are yet to have seen “anything cleaner, bolder, more
gleaming, more certain of its philosophy” than the crow with its eyes. The narrator notes how the crow is pleased by
the small things in the world, and keeps an upbeat and prideful attitude as it
struts down the beach. The narrator has
admiration in this bird, and I would like to think that the narrator would want
a friend with such contagious positive energy as the crow.
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