I Learn What A Crow Is.

I stretched as far as I could stretch.
My wings were fine things now. They could carry me up, halfway to the sun, so high that the cat became a speck and then disappeared completely.
So high that the lady, sitting on her chair, became smaller than a flea.
I met a shadow in the forest, and asked it what it was.
"I am a Shaman", it said. "I have been here for a thousand years. I have been dead for most of those years, but as you can see: I am still here."
"You look like a big bird, and a tree, and an animal, and a human, all at the same time."
"That is because I am all of those things," said the Shaman. "That is why I am still here. To show all those things that I am both them, and everything else."
"Why do you have to show them?" I asked.
"Because many of them can not see for themselves," said he.
"Can I help?" I asked.
"You are helping already, by being a crow," he answered. "Your job is to show everything the things they can not see for themselves. And you have another job, too."
"What is that?" I asked.
"Your work is to show what can not be seen, and to clean up after the living, when they live no more. You will not be loved, for this, by many of the living. But it is your work, and love will be yours, even as you do it."
"What is this thing you call Love?" I asked the Shaman.
"Love is what you create, as you go about your work," said the shadowy being.
"Love is the thing that you feel when you are high in the sky."
"Love is what lies beyond the sky, and is waiting for you, when you are ready to find it."
"Thank you," I said. And flew away, into the woods, to think about all this.