Across a wide range of Bantu languages, -ona is a verb root meaning “to see.” Whether those sounds OOh nn uhh appear together in that order in other languages for the same reason that language families seem to fit together into a tree I don’t know, but they do. Either way, I like the collection of meanings, whether they are related through history, etymology, or diddlyjacksquat.

It is one European language’s way of saying Anna or Hannah, meaning “grace” or “favor”. Another European language’s word for “wave”, “rhythm”, “return”. And in another still (also a European language), it seems similar to a word that might mean “lamb”.*

Whatever you do with all of that is your business, I know.

I [{(<”have”>)}] this crow I’ve named Ona.

How much can one “have” a wild animal, though (especially a bird), and how much corruption would it introduce into nature for that to be the case?**

I can build a fort in the woods with the natural (things) I find there, but Ona builds my fort in the sky. What does it mean to call it*** “mine”?

She builds my fort with that which I give back to nature — the cow fat, the chicken breast, almonds. She hears my bell and carries and calls; she receives in the heavens and comes down; she receives from down here and returns.

Who am I kidding? I don’t even have her like that. I have a pattern and she’s brought along her friends. They come to eat and that’s it.

Although I have been left some gifts.

I was at the lowest emotional point of my life. Approaching fifty, almost entirely alone. Definitely isolated. Not ostracized (mostly), and certainly buried in myself by myself.

After months of living in a Suburban at campgrounds and casino parking lots, I finally had the good fortune to sell my home in the wilderness. I could afford to live indoors now. When I lived in an SUV under trees, in dirt, showering at the community pool, the transience of my spirit matched that of my body. They were harmonious and so I didn’t really see the position I was in. I mean, I knew what I was doing, but didn’t fully grasp the sounds of self that were trying to return to me. Later, I learned how my heart was taking soundings, but nothing was returning in order to help me see my shape. I was the crow in this case.

Settling into the home, though, even though homemaking has always been a delight of mine, really accentuated just how much life had changed and how alone I was in the house. Becoming un-homeless^ was very hard in this aspect. It was most assuredly a good change, but that did not translate at all into easy. The more pictures that I hung up, the more knickknacks I placed, the more bits of furniture or equipment I purchased in order to complete my domain, the more the echoes reverberated.

I did have some people in my life, but they were not people that I could lean on with a bare soul. It would be unjust, and it would demand too much of them. No. The right relationship was primarily me as their father (or helper-close-friend who left you alone because).- I was having trouble taking care of myself. That’s too soft. I could not take care of myself.

Pardon my honesty, and if it’s too much, don’t read the rest of this paragraph. But even the touch I received at a doctor or dentist or chiropractor appointment meant the world to me. Not in any awkward, creepy way, but just being touched at all was profoundly moving to me. I was so painfully lonely. My heart hurt for a prolonged and enduring period. That kind of pain was something that, like everyone else, I had felt in moments or mini-eras of my life. But this time, it was LIFE. If you’ve ever had a back or neck injury you understand. Not a wrist, not a foot. Those are bad enough when they go on and on every day. But you can’t even sit or lay and get a throbbing back blow-out to cease. It speaks to you every moment of every day, days on endless. It makes you start to feel crazy. Sleep is a lucky sprinkling. All you think about is back back back back back .. Go back up there and read that paragraph; you can take it. Or just read it again and follow the instructions and see something of what I am trying, sloppily, to say.

This house I moved into had a yard, and that was nice since I had recently been used to the biggest chunk of earth I ever called mine in all of my life. A chunk of earth that an old woman I once stayed with in meso-America said was about the size of their town square. And I enjoyed the creatures that came through the yard of this house I started renting. Mostly what I observed were deer and a variety of birds. Then one day I remembered an old man in the wilderness I had known who told me of his experience gaining the trust or making a connection with crows when he lived in Detroit. He talked about being regular and leaving them food and establishing patterns. He told me interesting and funny stories about their love of shiny things and even one time when one of them stole his motorcycle keys that he foolishly left in the machine. He told me, and I don’t know whether I believed him entirely, but I did know him as an honest man, that one of those crows, before it grew up and moved away, would fly high above his children as they walked to school and then fly back to wherever its sprawling aerial home was or fly within its home. And that it knew when the children got out of school and would return to the school shortly before the school day ended and would wait on the roof of the building. And when his children exited, the bird would fly high in the sky and follow them back to their home. When he told me this story, it seemed amazing. Then a short time later, it seemed kind of unbelievable and probably embellished. But at this time of my life, it would seem to be fortuitous and like a touch from nature, if only.

What felt like it was taking forever and probably not going to work is now, in this second summer of sky-touch, something steadfast. Nature coming through as the metabolism of pattern.