Source:  Internet

“Perhaps when we die our names are taken from us by a divine magnet and are free to flutter here and there within the bodies of birds.  I’ll be a simple crow who can reach the top of Antelope Butte.”

            -Jim Harrison 

 

RAVEN    

Once I cut a path through the forest,

tunneling for days through the black jacks. 
Their bristled branches sweeping the ground. 
With bloodied hands
through briar thickets,
learning every prominent tree. 
The contour of every creek bed
and every terrace cut in desperation
to stop the dirt from blowing away. 
Waypoints on a childhood map,
internalizing the four cardinal directions. 

My wife said I was crazy. 

Nobody will ever walk that trail! 
But I do. 

Now, in silent atonement I walk,   

on the path quilted in new snow.
Boots parting the soft powder in bitter cold. 
The silence broken by a spectral shrill. 
A raven! 
Up there in the crown of the oak I used to climb as a child,
where I once learned to fly. 
Big as a red-tailed hawk. 
Black as the space between the stars. 
Ravens aren’t supposed to be here. 
We have the crow. 

Could it be my wife disguised as a trickster

casting a spell on our threadbare marriage? 
Or the plaintive ghost of my Mother
pleading a return to the Church? 

The Athabaskan’s believe raven is a transformer god,

appearing to help shape the rocky path ahead. 

Take me with you from this tree where I once learned to fly. 

Take me with you on the raven’s journey,
above the crooked highway of my life.