We’re trying to help the ravens return to their kind.  But it’s hard.

They’ve all had a good number of Wepo Wash days.  We have to carry Poe, but Never and More will go back and forth between our house and the wash at will.  At dusk, though, they return home to the ramada to roost.

Yesterday was blazing hot.  We were to be gone into the evening and so didn’t take Poe out because we wouldn’t be able to retrieve him before dark.

Never and More didn’t leave either, though. Instead they chose to hang around with Poe.  It could have been that it was just too dang hot (all the birds sat around, following the shade, their mouths gaping open as a cooling response).  Or it could have been that they enjoyed being in close proximity to water.

Or perhaps they just wanted to be with Poe.  A couple times when one or the other of the dogs approached him (Poe tends to hang out on the ground), the other two alighted near by and cawed defensively.

When I returned that evening though, More and Never were nowhere in sight.  For the first time, they chose not roost at the house.  A good thing, I thought.  But that left Poe, alone, roosting on the back of one of the porch chairs.  The dogs sniffed at him and he was safe, but I thought it not good for him to become too comfortable with our house.

I carried him over to a log leaning against the ramada and he clambered up it in an ungainly way.  It wasn’t too comfortable of a roost and he had to work to stay balanced, so I brought the ladder over and he soon alighted on that.  He took to his customary habit of staring off silently into the desert, as if awaiting for someone or something.  He’s one to always look out, away from even his siblings.  I wish any of you could experience his gaze, so solitary and at once both hopeful and resigned.

I lay in the hammock, looking up at the stars.  And I talked to Poe.  And he murmured back.  I felt sad and worried for him, stuck with my meager human company.  He needs to get better.  He needs to fly.  Or soon he will be left behind, first by his siblings and then the other ravens.  And then even by us.  It felt too unjust.  Too undeserving.  And with only that, he and I continued to wait.  We stared out into space and that deluge of stars.