Divination is Raven’s mantra as
Raven flies the dispossessed
Earth from pole to pole, drifting
on harsh currents of wind
feeling mistaken as an entity
of the world, never knowing
from time to time a land
on the map. Raven has no map,
because people go places
larger than themselves.
Raven sees fighter jets
flying above, thinking,
those sounds, that soaring,
unlearns the freedom
of birds, in the manmade
implicit catastrophe promised.
The promise of freedom
is ironic, no matter if one
has wings.
The land from which
Raven flies day to day,
through what seems
like centuries, is only hours,
or decades of despair and at the
same time inconsolable beauty.
Flying over the lights of many
cities, Raven sees their day shadows.
Raven sees cities full of ghosts
and cities full
of people partying
side-by-side with distraught
people living with pain and loneliness.
Raven considers both the simplicity
and complexity of all things: the sun
coming closer and closer, love
that cannot die, people moving
blindly in the flames, in the emptiness
before they celebrate each ecstatic
moment of their lives as they topple
with arms around each other.
Raven flies resolutely, finding
himself tasked with
understanding
these human rituals, what they foretell
about the future, and what the patterns
of fallen leaves mean.
Raven sings in the chambers of his
Corvid consciousness and bears the
fierce rain of a spring storm,
careening in the tumultuous wind.
Raven watches people fleeing
from eternity. What do they
remember from childhood
and what are their rituals
to try to recreate times of sorrow,
pain, or happiness? Divination
requires hope.
Unlike crows, Raven doesn’t
quarrel with the air, yet deeply
fears that many interpreters
of the earth’s rituals
have gone silent.