The young Christ turned, for He heard Mary calling to the sheep and goats, and knew that dayset was come and that in the valleys the gloaming was already rising like smoke from the urns of the twilight. When he looked back he saw that seven white doves were in the cedar beyond the pool, cooing in low ecstasy of peace and awaiting through sleep and dreams the rose-red pathways of the dawn. Down the long grey reaches of the ebbing day He saw seven birds rising and falling on the wind black as black water in caves, black as the darkness of night in old pathless woods.
And that is how the first doves became white, and how the first crows became black and were called by a name that means the clan of darkness, the children of wind.
IN MEADOW AND POND
A SPRING LILT
Through the silver mist