Emeridot Forest
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The Ravens
The raven sours above it all,
He laughs and he plays,
The forest echoes his resounding call,
He flies without fear all his days.
See his dark figure contrast against the snow,
A more majestic creature you could never know.
Yet here I labor, shovel against the dirt;
My eyes fall to the raven before me, so still and dead;
What force could overcome so magnificent a creature or even hurt?
Many a day he’d laid under the snow in wait of the time that I could dig his bed.
Now the snow is gone; he’d waited long enough,
So many days since the other ravens had left, and I’d heard their last “Caw!”s so gruff.
As I dig into the dirt and gently place him in the grave,
Above a lone raven sours and lets out a farewell call;
“Caw! Caw!” and there was a strange gentleness in the sound he gave;
Had he waited to find a summer home until he could be sure of his friend’s burial?
A strange sadness fills me; this bird I now bury should be soaring, too;
Flying off into the summer sky so blue.
I fill in the hole, but pause to bid the soaring raven so long;
“Good-bye, raven; I’ll see you in the fall.”
Soaring toward the south, above the birches on his wings, powerful and strong,
So free he flies, leaving me now with the memory of his call.
-Brietta Kiele
Copyright 2008 to Brietta Kiele. All rights reserved.