Portrait of a Raven

Winter, spring, summer and fall

are my favorite season.
I am a raven. I steal because I need.
My family make no excuses
for our actions; we live
how we live and we let
others know we’re alive.

Lamar snow and chilly forty below,

four-thirty sunset
with week empty-stomach,
we lean close-in --
my three brothers and I –
on a bleached aspen limb.
We watch three silent
dirty white wolves stalk.
A spiraling circle,
separating buffalo,
the old and slow,
to deep fields
where plucking is easy.
There is no fear,
this is our late dinner.

My throaty caw startles the world awake.

From low within winter’s shallow silent bed,
I bring Yellowbells back to life.
Rare spring calm, tonight,
cloudless, circling, stirring the wind,
shielding stars – twinkle.
I dance in my vespers.

In the early hours, I hop sideways

down main street of Mammoth.
On the sun-warmed concrete,
in a world disconnect from mine.
I find not what is true, real, or natural.
I scream hell at three million passersby.
I apologize for nothing.

One eye looks to the future

and one eye to the past;
with the low slung noon sun,
perched in a Cottonwood carcass
high above a red-leaved Bog Bush,
I use Winter’s breath
to tell how it is:
I am the running blue
of both river and sky,
purple perfume of flower fields,
whispering campfire smoke
that trails you around the rock ring,
and you’ll not guess,
but I am the void
of the starry sky,

and after black storms,

I am the rainbow.