Never Count Crow
love and loss in Kennebunk, Maine
by
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Early morning, 1989 Light rises out of the earth in the little On a morning in 1989, further south along the main street of town, the sun is just rising in the tall windows of an 1881 farmhouse. The house is on the left side of leaf history scratching its history across the morning street like an ancient hand, the leaf announces time’s shift. why will it rise out of silence staying in my mind these these various years. seeing it only as a late summer day, we rose and played at our seriousness, dressed and rushed, and completed what we thought essential then. but, yesterday, in a falling dusk, the sound came again from silence, and I woke with him, now quiet beyond belief. the windows are still August-wide. air sings the same old song, telling of love dressed in blood. It is August. Gene and I stir with the rise of breeze skimming the river that flows lazily at the foot of our street and spills down the falls in the center of town. Curtains billow softly.
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About the Book
“Just behind the scrim of ordinary life, the notice rippled in the air. I heard the whispered warning; it was received and noted, recorded in lines of poetry that became insistent and mystifying. When does a person’s death begin in a palpable way? The appointment is made, the clock is running. Although we are unaware of its progress, Death will not be denied. It is the remarkable person who, rising to a day full of plans and events, takes time to scan the skies, seeing the dark cloud forming on the horizon.”
Never Count Crow is a nonfiction account of one family’s experience of a sudden death in their midst and the events that preceded and followed that death. The book attempts to illuminate for the reader a design of warning and support woven in the time around death for the eyes of the aware. The message of the book is that the mystical nature of a person’s leave-taking is beautiful and hopeful, though weighted with tremendous heartache for those left behind. It offers suggestions of unseen but deeply felt connections to the spiritual domain that offer help in the healing process. Tracing actual events using original poetry and lyrical prose, the author shares an intimate experience of love and loss, and the reader comes to understand that every death is both a test and a gift in disguise.
Never Count Crow warmly reconstitutes life in a small Maine town during the years of 1972-2004 and is filled with a cast of delightful characters, the state of Mainebeing one. The primary character, Eugene Morse Graves, lends the book his boundless energy and spirit. In the lives of this family, readers will recognize the sacredness of every interaction when seen through the lens of loss.
About the Author
Cynthia Fraser Graves is the keeper of the details of the life and death events recounted in Never Count Crow. Her previously self- published work is eyes like jewels, a poetry collection, and she is presently at work on a novel titled Dusk on Route One. Fraser Graves taught English for three decades before retiring in 2000 to write full-time from her home on the southern