They span above and across the road in one long, wide ribbon, a river of bird. An arcing, undulating movement, a murmur of audible rubbing from wingtip to wingtip, a darkening stretch for a mile, more, from one undone side of the valley to the other, coming they come, forward they move, in the falling sunset, the gloaming, this wet dusk of fungus growing. Here they are, an eruption of simultaneous crows made blacker in shifting silhouette than the branches, and can one see just one beating heart, when as one their current reforms? Shuddering wider, deeper, they do not collide for more than a moment, they do not fall to the ground, they fly with purpose. The once hollow air a solid thing in their presence, rising like a heavy lump in the choked throat and touch wing to breast to arm, leg, belly, or fin, with a gasp that can't be explained but only given-in, connected, with feather and tooth and hard-hooved foot, given-in for fear of all is lost and don't look away or how dare you because the trees here have been cut down, the stream submerged, the cows removed or killed. Everything must change, even what it means to die. Still. They rise, express nothing but night, and my eyes, my nose, my skin, with the cold steam of my breath, know how it is... a body so large it could eat the sky, swallow the hidden moon with a mindful peck if it ever felt the need to be reckoned with, and it deserves to be hungry for we have eaten it all.
—Mare Hake, "Wingtip to Wingtip," published in terrain.org