Crow, Pt. 2 - Mount Eerie

A crow that’s being dreamed

By a child who’s being carried through the forest

Sleeping, wondering in her twilight half-awareness

Where her mother went

I know that you died

But in this child’s crow dream you survive

Beneath layers of magical symbolic wild animals

Inhabiting the edges of our fogged-over consciousnesses

Grasping for something to hold, something old

Like a name cut into a stone

Or a bird that will make eye contact

That’s where you live now

Or at least that’s where I hold you

And we’re still here without you

Sleeping and the sun’s coming up

In the ruins of our household, we wake up again

Coming back into this

Every day that comes, the echo of you living here gets quieter

Obscured by the loud wind of us now

Wailing and moaning for you

But also living, talking about school

Making food, just surviving and still containing love

Waking up again, the baby that you knew is now a kid

And when she looks at me with your eyes the shape of almonds

I am stirred inside and reemerge

I go downstairs and turn on CBC and make some coffee

And boil two eggs, make two pieces of bread into toast

Open the window and give the child some clothes

And get us sitting at the table

Where your chair still sits across from me, watching

I stand up to put on music

Our daughter sees and asks for mama’s record

And she’s staring at the speaker with this look of recognition

Putting it together that that’s you singing

I’m sobbing and eating eggs again

You’re a quiet echo on loud wind

But when I’m trying to, I see you everywhere

In plants and birds and in our daughter

In the sun going down, and coming up, and in whatever

And the myths that used to get told around the fire

Where a seal’s head pokes up through from underwater

Crossing a threshold between two worlds, yours and mine

We were skeletally intertwined once

But now I notice ravens instead

I don’t see you anywhere

If you still hang in the branches

Like burnt wood, I will go out beneath

With arms reached and run my fingers through the air

Where you breathed, touching your last breath

Reaching through to the world of the gone with my hand empty