THOSE 2

black crows on Grandpa's 78
heard on his big wind-up Victrola
were pretty funny, folk wisdom not offensive to the child me
who did not know yet about stereotypes and had never seen
a Negro. I laughed. We all laughed. As we did at Amos
and Andy. Everything grows and changes, everything
evolves and the 2
black crows I saw this morning when up early on my way
to the dentist, the 2 that flew from a tree to a nice cranny
in the telephone pole and cooed to each other, as if
not crows at all but slightly raucous doves, those 2
caressing each other with bills and shoulders, crooning
"You! You! You" ("there's no one but you, you, you..."),
black true but brighter
than the day's new sun, those 2
handed me a whole new philosophy. First of all I never thought
of female crows before. I suppose because of their dress -
not that men all dress in black but the two fathers I dreamed of last night -
Ralph Nader and Synanon's Chuck Dederich - both wore black where they sat
on the steps of some public building waiting
for me & my buddy Joy to come along: they both wore black. My dream
had to do with leadership. I thought, I believe, in the dream that
if only these 2 would work together Synanon would not collapse the second time around
and the Green Party would prevail. It was because of the singularity
of the One Black Crow. Awake, I know, primates do not organize themselves
around 2, no, never; it's 1, and when that 1 weakens another
1 comes to knock him down, but sometimes the 1
can be she. But don't the birds
suggest
another way? After all,
instead of flying at one another with beak and claw to destroy,
what if our leaders
could just say to each other, "You! You! You!" Or what if we
could? Then there is the whole question of
do we really need
leaders? Who's leading
those 2 black crows?