RavenSong
a poetic libretto
art and poetry
Karen Pierce Gonzalez
Mythic guide
Gliding on gales
Raven scoured the shorelines
for signs of humans lost
in clumps of seaweed
and gnarled ropes of kelp,
She found me
alone
washed up
onto the sand
forgetful
unsinging.
Her task daunting
she nearly chipped her beak
against
my hard-shell refusal of help.
Ebony feathers dripping wet
she pried my shell open
made me row a canoe
across a global expanse of water -
a world I could not circumnavigate alone.
Before sailing
stargazers charted maps, study weather patterns
I had to follow to keep my mooring.
In the shadows, I listened to watchful conversations
with open-sky constellations. Archer and dog
chased solar wind clouds around Venus
whose queenly crown slipped into lunar pools
only stellar mermaids could swim.
Unseen, unable to speak, I took notes
and tossed peanuts over my shoulder for Raven.
Still bound to having more
Raven led me into brackish waters
where over-farmed,
over-fished estuaries
had been winnowed
for profit
nothing
stopped saline coastal currents
from pushing
and pulling my hips forward.
In
the swoosh, I toppled.
Think of the future
Children cordgrass-tied to mangrove
bushes
lining the lagoon, couldn’t follow
their parents into the rising
tides.
Left behind, they cried, come
back!
Inlet breezes blew their words
away,
ruffled Raven’s shiny feathers
as sharp-toothed girls and boys
learned to untie themselves, search
for food.
Sun-washed,
memories of family faded.
Raven shrilled:
Who can teach them how to work a
water-wheel?
On cold days
Raven plucked bits of her shiny plumage.
dropped it into the canoe’s forward
lookout point
where I sat hoping to see where I
was going.
Raven wouldn’t let me berth here
Minus tide mudflats
reached out to dock,
grabbed sailboats
dragged them to land.
Under pressure
anchor chains swung,
dirt fingers pulled
stem to stern,
mast poles broke
into houses
built upon piers
for safety.
Mud hands twisted
grains of wood -
against will
they snapped
into splinters
sent out to sea.
When beached
at low tide on Camp Hang-on island
I looked for Ankh — an
undersea boy
who made bonfires with
driftwood.
He managed to survive days on
dry land
and said we were still more
than 60 percent water.
Even in sleep, he ocean-swam
everywhere.
I told him Raven scanned
every day
for signs of our waking up
the deep-dream lining of our
spines.
In that sprawl we would parasail
above crushed glass sands
into the next swell.
When I was seasick
Raven hovered only inches away
to make sure I wasn’t
whipped by salt
winds into submission.
A sheltered harbor’s ceremonial crest
Sculpted on red cedar, Raven
oversaw Salmon feeding Bear
and lifted buck-tooth Beaver
—fur once hunted like gold—
onto howling Sea Wolf shoulders.
Rodent eyes ever on the cove,
he scouted for strangers -
eager to keep them at bay.
Gift
When Raven opened me up,
the pearl inside had not yet
formed.
The grit of
continents rising and falling
clung to one
another
as if my life
depended upon them
to grind me
into a gem
and maybe it did.
Maybe, in the
end, my journey
was to have
been to be born a jewel
admired,
treasured, held closely
against my once
hopeful
hurt-radiant
heart whose chambers
faced the four
directions
on a prayer
wheel: East South West North.
Above and
below,
vast
cloud-skies of aqua
compressed the
sorrow wounds
of having not been
seen or heard
as I saw and
heard myself now.
In this Raven-mirrored
world
salt water
tears tasted like honey
and far away
moonlight ladled
crisp blue
tints and toasted red hues
not known
before
onto a paint
palette -
my own hands
the brushes.
Grateful
this legendary bird spotted me
clammed up, unable to set myself free,
I built her a totem.
A four-foot-tall pine trunk wrapped
in purple-yellow electrical coils and tiny white lights
that in darkness starlit her fabled beauty
and I sang
Raven wings lift my silence into
sound and sight
carry my words and images across
waves
towards new ports of entry into
life.
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