Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Poetry Wednesday



This is a fake legend. I wrote it to try to portray the feeling that many adoptees have that they are not fully human because they aren't allowed to know their true origins.

Sometimes, we invent our origins.

The stanzas written in regular lettering are meant to represent someone telling a story, the italics indicate where the storyteller is spinning a tall tale.


Raven-Watcher

by Andrea Ross


Crouched on a shale slope, she peered

from between yucca spears

to watch them toboggan down snow patches

on their black-feathered asses; she muffled

her laugh when they snacked on snow-clods.


She learned raven-talk—

the sounds of water pouring into a canteen,

a hasp settling into place.

But what she loved most

was the way ravens loved: in mid-air.


Opposites attracted;

her sweetheart was a rock-climber.

He spent each free moment pressed

to canyon walls, while she loved the air’s caress.


Some swore she jumped.

She tumbled over the rim

like the pack-mules in the snowstorm that year.


Black feathers crowed across her face in love—free-fall, a mile.

They twirled, iridescent, and then swept upward.


Now, in a pile of raven’s down,

a human-raven baby softly grows


while mother blackness swoops

around the world, calling.