I hadn't had a decent walk for weeks;
Weather and chores kept getting in the way
Or else I didn't have the energy.
Today the sun shone brightly from the south
At noon with scattered patches of ice cloud.
All across the northern sky horse-tails of cirrus chased.
In the not-too-distant west loomed heavy overcast.
The roads were ploughed, I'd not be wading through snow.
A heavy frost covered every little thing in the landscape.
It didn't look real, like some exaggerated painting
By a meticulous hyper-photo-realist:
The limbs, the branches and all the tiniest twigs
Of every single tree stood rimed with frost,
Outlined by intense sunlight. Looking south,
A span and a half west of Sol blazed a single sundog,
Coruscating in red, blue and gold almost as intense
As Sol himself — I'd never seen its equal.
Though tracks of deer meandered all over the fields
As yet I hadn't seen a living creature.
Off to the southwest I heard a crescendo of sound,
A pack of snowmobiles, growling and howling.
They sounded like ferocious prehistoric predators.
Gradually the noise faded into the distance,
Leaving the landscape utterly silent. Suddenly
Behind the screen of trees on the road allowance
I glimpsed a moving speck of black, a raven
Flying low and furtive, headed southeasterly.
He made no sound as he flew, almost as if
He intended to disappear without being noticed.
Though sometimes the raven bears important omens,
I thought, "Not today. This afternoon the nagual
Avoids me, has no urgent messages."
Continuing down the grid road going east,
Long line in hand, invisible dog at my side,
I heard a vehicle coming from the west.
I stepped off the roadway to let it go by:
A white pickup truck drove past me without a wave.
Blocked up in its open cargo bay it carried,
Proud and majestic, a big poison-green Polaris,
A deserter from the velociraptor horde.
Slowly the brilliant sunlight began to soften.
As I walked on eastward toward my turnaround point,
The spectacular sundog dimmed and faded away.
Suddenly from the trees just beyond the tee
I heard it: "crooock, crooock" — a loud, vibrant note
With a musical, almost bell-like overtone.
I stopped to listen. Slyly, the furtive raven
Had positioned himself behind the trees, unseen,
Just beyond the end of the east-west grid road.
Slowly, deliberately, nine times he repeated his call,
Controlled, contained, without haste or anxiety,
With ten or fifteen seconds between repetitions.
Then he fell silent. While I approached the tee
He decamped from the trees and unhurriedly flew southwest
Over my farmstead — message delivered, his mission complete.
As I walked back home the grey overcast moved in,
The show was over. As I neared the farm lane
An older nondescript black pickup overtook me,
Passing with a friendly wave from the farmer who drove it.
The sky lowered. The breeze was picking up.
My cheeks and fingers felt frosty.
When I got home
A mug of hot tea in my paws, invisible Liz lying near,
I tried to interpret the omen — it didn't make sense.
The extraordinary spectacular singular sundog;
The clear double call of the raven repeated nine times;
Flanked and framed by the opposed pickup trucks —
All I could get was the obvious dominant dualism,
The distant veiled menace of the howling mechanical horde,
And the central enigma of the nonary repetitions.
Singularity — the Sun — mirrored by a singular sundog,
Duality repeated ninefold — no, it all fell apart.
I couldn't come up with anything that would cohere.
Maybe it wasn't an omen — except: to say that,
Just made me all the more certain that really it was,
Although I couldn't parse it.
Upstairs, later that evening
I read the day's news, seated comfortably at the computer:
A grandiose political farce unfolded in Washington
Whilst halfway around the globe in a province of China
A massive viral pandemic inexorably gathered momentum.
—oOo—