You Are a Raven
Heather Sager
I hike the mountain looking for you
and your warm advice.
I search the cabin, the horse farm and field
but you’re not there.
By the unceasing, hoary day,
I insist you live.
The sea eagle skirts the piney hill
and I inherit your daylight pain.
Birds flotilla the field and sky.
Now I know you are not dead—
only transformed.
Cursed by life’s disloyalties
you approach as a jet-black raven,
make your precise landing
on the crooked, gray branch
of a bishop’s-head pine.
Your dust-dark eye probes me.
I stand amid the sun-stroke yellow field
and boast, “Let judgement visit me,
let sharp fangs tear my breast,
let fall my tears!”
My wily eye transforms
to that of a carnal raven; I am changed.
Cleanse my sins, Mother of all—
I ask as I confess to the lunging sky—
transform me twice
so the true hawk in me
may yet fly.