The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year

Fall is “hurricane season” (199), but Renkl has learned to appreciate the rains and mists that come with it. She feels guilty for enjoying such weather, largely because birds and butterflies are migrating. The weather is a reminder that “winter is coming” (200).

In “Praise Song for a Clothesline in Drought,” Renkl describes how “the minutest winged creatures” (201) sup on the moisture from her drying bedsheets. The light glints off their tiny wings.

For Renkl, autumn light is “the loveliest light there is” (203). The colors seem cooler and clearer, and flowers bloom beside the roads. The migrating birds fill Tennessee with different songs, and Renkl declares that fall is “the season of farewells” (204). When she was younger, fall never upset Renkl since she had her whole life ahead of her. These days, fall reminds her that her life is limited. Nonetheless, she greets the season thankfully, looking both forward and backward like the Roman god Janus.

Renkl remembers her grandmother’s “gangly, disorganized houseplant” (207). The plant was ugly, but Renkl later learned that it was a species of night-blooming cactus that bloomed one night a year, if at all. Renkl now has one of her own, as does her brother.