Crow River
A dark of river wandering
across a muted sky.
Each crow’s wing a tributary.
The rowing of the eye.
Flight of fluid distances,
murder in the snow.
Each rook a rivulet of mind—
each flake all its own.
Over rowhouse roofs they flow,
a slow unending course.
Wave on wave, this is not water—
form and then a force.
In Stone
Learn, as you read me, stranger,
how danger
surrounds every delight,
how night
from which none can wake you
will take you
and memory forsake you,
as you, just now, are turning
from old inscriptions, learning
how danger, how night, will take you.
— Rhina Espaillat
Raven Song
In the beginning, Raven was a snow-white bird.
Grandmother moon
eyes the earth—
Raven, that ragged
throated god
grips the sun-bleached limb
of a swamp cedar
ignores the moon.
When Raven first saw
the moon and sun
he was overcome.
He stole them
and flew
dropped them
in the blue winding of time.
His wings
charred
blackened
scarred.
The risk of this—.
Grandmother is stoic now
crater-lipped
eclipsed.
Raven’s greatest trick.
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