treachery ovenbird The sky above the old maple tree rips open and through the ragged gap come winged harbingers who roost in the brittle branches and scream their curdled warnings. They look, at first, like crows but the long glossy throat feathers give them away—ravens, black pinions like laminated midnight, and voices stolen from corpses. The one perched nearest me opens its beak revealing a wet red cavern, gullet soft and bloody like a raw steak. It could swallow the universe if it tried, and it looks hungry. Suddenly, a tapping on the glass door which separates me from the accumulating unkindness. I look down and catch a glimpse of pale fur, white as a winter ermine, and two eyes pained and pleading. Action precedes thought. I open the door and the creature doesn’t hesitate. It throws its body through the gap and I slam the door against the stirring conspiracy in the tree. At my feet: a squirrel, coat bleached by leucism, white hellebore face, the tiniest frost bitten hands which clutch a teddy bear no larger than a quail’s egg. “Aren’t you a strange November child,” I say, but the squirrel is already gone. “I hope it didn’t forget its bear,” I whisper to the empty room. The ravens have dispersed, deprived of their prey. The afternoon is waning. I might have let nature take its course and left the squirrel to its fate. But am I not a part of nature too? Or wasn’t I once? There’s a drift of feathers gathering at the door and it’s beginning to snow. 251128 what's it to you? who go blather from