Earlier in the week I was up before dawn preparing for an early day at work. As I sat at the dining room table, writing in my journal and sipping on a cup of coffee, the old houses up and down my street where still filled with the quituted of night. Nothing stirred under the glitter of the winter stars. But when I had reached the end of the page that changed.
A flock of ravens descended on the neighborhood. Their insistent cackles instantly filled the air with an alarming urgency that drew me right to the window. But they flew invisibly in the darkness among the vague silhouettes of rooftops and the bear arms of the trees clustered around them.
That urgency in their calling and being cloaked in the silent darkness they disturbed, created a mystery in my mind and moved me to write a few lines to describe what I could not see. I went back to my journal and sketched out the scene with a few brief lines and left it at that. But over the course of the week the scene stuck with me, and I decided to turn it into a poem.
As I worked on it that fabulous poem by Poe, The Raven, began to weave itself into my thinking. As helpless as a dreamer I let those thoughts go where they would, and the results are below.
I gave it to my son to read and much to my surprise, it made him laugh when he was done with it. When I asked why the laughing, he said, ‘This is what Poe should have said to the raven, instead of pleading then throwing a tantum at it over his dead girlfriend.’
Winter Raven
Night black, feather fine
Dawn shouters glide.
Down dim skies and gather
At my frosted morning window.
Cackle not your omen songs,
Same sung in Odin's day,
You beastly birds set to guard
Saragossa's martyred saint.
I know you dark
Wind rider profits
The battle proud Caesar sought in Gaul.
The same mocking nemesis questioned
In the torment of Boston's bard.
Why land here winged tutors of Cain
Restless sky shadows wandering against
The glimmer thread of dawn?
Be silent, be gone.
Back to the crest of Kazimierz's clan courageous.
Tell me not my fate well hidden
In the here or there of coming day.
'The Lord is my shepherd
I shall not want.
God's staff and rod comfort me.
Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death
I fear no evil, for he is with me.'
Be gone, cast no bones from thy claws,
No black talisman to offer from thy boney beaks.
Be gone the dawn approaches fast
With the moon's silver back sailing low
The star-spangled water on high.
My heart is not your dark domain to taunt.
Be gone winded specter be gone.
Prairie Beacon 