Crow
Crow, Crow,
why so proud?
My eyes are sharp,
my voice is loud.
Why do you choose
the tallest tree?
I sit up high
where I can see.
What if danger
lurks below?
I caw my friends
and off we go!
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From Farmer’s Dog in the Forest: More Rhymes for Two Voices, a picture book with verses by David L. Harrison and illustrations, Arden Johnson-Petrov, 2005. Colourful and lively, an accessible introduction to poetry for young readers and ESL learners of all ages.
Harrison has written many books for children and adults (see davidlharrison.com/books.htm), and won much recognition for his contributions to literacy and community awareness efforts. Awards include, in 1972, the Christopher Medal, for The Book of Giant Stories (recently republished and available, though am not sure that its appearance is exactly like the original). The Christopher Awards were established by Christopher founder Father James Keller to salute media that “affirm the highest values of the human spirit.” Their goal is to encourage men, women and children to pursue excellence in creative arenas that have the potential to influence a mass audience positively. Award winners encourage audiences to see the better side of human nature and motivate artists and the general public to use their best instincts on behalf of others (from The Christophers website, christophers.org, accessed 12 September 2015).
Harrison has a blog at davidlharrison.wordpress.com, where you can see what he’s up to at present.
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This particular poem especially appealed to me not only because I’m partial to crows, but because I simply can’t resist a pun, and it’s the only one I found in the book. A “pun” is a little joke often occurring seamlessly within regular conversation; it capitalizes on two possible meanings of a word, or on the fact that (as occurs in “Crow”) there exist words that sound alike but have different meanings (“caw” and “call”). An easy-to-remember definition is that a pun is a play on words. (I found myself wishing that each of the verses here contained a pun: the book would then be like a puzzle, and even more of a fun learning adventure than it already is. But I imagine it’s not always easy to create a good pun . . . though bad ones are enjoyable too, so, hey, it’s worth a try! Here’s one to get you started, courtesy of a familiar nursery rhyme: Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle / The cow jumped over the moo-oo-o-oo-oon . . .)
WordVerseUniverse 
Ahem. Cough, cough.
Do you know what it’s called when a group of crows gathers to consider an issue?
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A cawcus.
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:D
(Brilliant!)
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And a group of crows is called murder. :)
Thank you for wonderful book recommend.
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You’re most welcome :) Yeah, murder is the operative term . . . You’ve got to wonder who thinks up these words, and how they come to be accepted into usage. In this case, it seems safe to say it’s by folks who aren’t particularly fond of crows for one reason or another . . . (Similarly for ravens, a group of which is an unkindness, can you believe it?) I much prefer Linda’s term, cawcus, for crows. Much more appropriate, I think :)
And right on cue for the topic at hand, yesterday our yard was inundated by tens? hundreds? of itinerant grackles. Sadly, my source, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_terms_of_venery,_by_animal, has no relevant term for these guys, but they are quite hilarious, as they stretch and puff themselves up on their toes (I’m sure there’s a clip online somewhere, worth a search). I’d hoped that they might constitute a parliament, so they might join our raucous political assembly, but this wasn’t to be, as a parliament, aka building (!) is a congregation of rooks! (A rook, in my dictionary: a gregarious Eurasian crow with black plumage and a bare face, nesting in colonies in treetops. • Corvus frugilegus, family Corvidae.)
So . . . It’s time to invent an appropriate name for a large grouping of grackles, don’t you think? (More than one name is also good :) (I notice in the wiki list that the letters U, X, Y have no patrons . . . is anything possible there, I wonder . . .)
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Haha, yes, some of those groups are hilarious. Wiki says “A large group of grackles is called a plague.” That is almost worse than murder and unkindness. :)
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Ha! A plague! The site I saw didn’t list this; thanks, Bee.
But I don’t like these words at all.
Shall work on proposing alternates :)
A large group of grackles: an uplift / a xylophony / a yakka. Though “xylophony” may be a bit too musical for these guys.
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As long as they don’t dig up and eat my seed corn, I have no quarrel with crows. I especially enjoy seeing them chasing away the red tailed hawks that might otherwise eat our chickens. Their caw has become very familiar to me. “My voice is loud.” Oh, yea. Even for those of us who aren’t experts in bird songs, that one is unmistakable. :)
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Indeed :) They seem to have such a well-organized ‘first response’ system to intruders; great communicators and cooperators. (I guess they wouldn’t be fooled by scarecrows? . . . Corvid evolution! The blueberry farm in our area has set up some sort of raptor cry playback in their fields . . . but this might be aimed at gulls, don’t know. I wish you many successful and delicious corn harvests :)
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