Scavengers

My recent bowl illustration has two crow forms
tessellated like twins, surrounded by a ribcage or shell
form and LouAnn's haunting and visceral words, "Always 
into the glare... banished from this place...through 
that bony canal... sob air into new lungs."

I have developed a fondness for crows. I meet them daily
on the winter drive to work. Their solid, shimmering, dark
bodies contrast the snowy roadsides. Scavengers, willing
to put themselves on the edge to survive--sometimes
haunting eyeless shadows in the periphery, other times,
graceful blue-black dancers. But scavengers, always
scavengers, and I am often amazed at how they not only
survive, but thrive into such large birds.

Scavenger was my nickname when I was a counselor
and the arts and crafts coordinator at a YMCA Summer
camp in college. I dug in the dumpsters for cardboard,
searched for rocks and sticks in the woods--whatever I
could find to make art with campers on a small budget.
The camp director gave me that nickname, but what he
didn't know is that I really didn't mind. Scavenging
energized me. I was not only surviving, but thriving and
learning how to make something out of next to nothing.