Border Lights
From Fog on the Clock, page 1
ISBN: 978-1-931002-61-5
Petaluma 2008
I have traveled places
where only buck skunks lumber,
sound moves urgently, ground is smooth,
worn the color of spice cake.
Dogs swallow dust all summer long, ‘never bark.
Above me the owl stares, knowing
her wings can cut these woods in half.
Did she see me last night tossing in my sleep,
sheets tearing as I rearranged my dreams?
On the lake below, the loon carries her downy young.
She cries and dives to disappear.
Her presence breaks, a popped balloon.
The black of her head is a black I’ve met
only in a nightmare from childhood,
Her eyes are red as sewn buttons.
Her call reaches all places, hidden and unseen.
The heron hides. She is a virgin, demure, straight and stiff.
Her beak points like a needle.
She dodges the measure of curiosity,
struts over twigs, a peacock, not yet ready to open her silver fan.
She alone decides when she will rise
and glides through branches, wings big as overcoats.
The raven is a mystic, who mingles with the unclean,
a scavenger of all the world’s trials.
She will feed on life’s brokenness.
Shy and hopeful, I left home
to journey lands above and below water,
listening to the raven’s song.
I learned to be fast and wary.
I learned to speak and sing.
I learned that out of blackness,
all things could be drawn forth into the light.
