Three Black Crows

Two cackling crows on housetops halfway up
the block, at dawn; one hiding in a tall, leafy tree.

Memories about what grandma said, “crows signal
death… watch out for crows, they will tell you when.”

I heard them as hearts squeezed like rubber balls.
I heard them cackling as arm and neck veins

extended themselves.
Aneurysms, heart attacks, strokes, DOA’s?

Casual medical casualties:
panic scurries; rat-like…mistakes were made.

Road rules: never ascribe blame to physicians; their
educations are too costly. Nurses hang, drying like jerky.

Patients, on a full-moon, rushed into the lingering goodnight;
bleeding out onto hungry, white sheets…

Two cackling crows on housetops halfway up
the block, at dawn; one hiding in a tall, leafy tree.

It was the Ides of March when they cackled.

**

Seven Winters of Darkness

For seven winters there was no
light at all, no glimmer of hope for light.
The night ruled; unbearable. Bones chilled,
ached, then flashed with phosphorous-fire.

Still…there was no light.
Prayers bounced off of obsidian.

There was no remembrance of sunshine;
yellow tulips blowing beneath blue
skies at the gentlest touch of the wind.
I stayed in a cave of shadows with

nightmares in varied shades of charcoal.
My broken heart, eaten bite by bite;
I became a bloodless, heart-less zombie.
Then, I blood-thirsted.

A lust for revenge sequestered me;
to seven winters of darkness. At the floor
of my cave, a point of light pieced through.
There would be no redress. I could no longer

paint my face for tribal war, nor fire-chant.
Like others before me, I wallowed in lost-love.
I can never forget, but I can and will forgive.
I can walk the misty forest of glowing-green.

I can let lapis-waters
lap upon my freshly-painted, dancing toes.

**

Ascending From Shadows

I will never forget my captivity in shadows
although I summon forgetfulness.

Gnarled, grimaced faces; grinding-of-jaw.
Moss-covered, round stones held the horror

of morphing eyes & skin, of limbs in limbo.

I remember the damp coldness of the dismal
stones which imprisoned me.

The lack of hope which taunted
until despair arrived with its black bag

Within this bag were implements of
incalculable torment: disarming blindness,

uncertainty. Stepping, falling through cracks
which when breached triggered memories better

left buried within the subconscious mind.

I fluttered to the surface once hope arrived.
Not in grave clothes, but in a school girl’s uniform.

I hurriedly skipped along, stopping long enough
to pick Daffodils in the knee-high, lime-green grass.

I sang a child’s ditty, ascending from shadows,
headed to my stained- glass sanctuary atop a hill.

I will not look backwards into shadow-land.
I will remember Lot’s wife.