Raven

I once thought I had become so used to sorrow that I
might never speak again.

I purged myself to a mute, perfect blackness,
waiting just to give one last unhuman cry and fly away,

Anything to escape, 
to  head for the far mountains and the headwaters,

To live the life of a scavenger and beggar, a medieval vagabond,
always apart, feeding on the lives and hidden parts around me.

But letting go wasn’t an end,
merely the funeral for the lost, the old and gone, a 

Mere rolling back of the stone for
what comes next: No life without death. 

The raven, feeling the updrafts, sought high air,
above the smoke of chimneys, beyond memory.

Intrigued by shiny things, he descends, in time,
awkward and clownish on the ground.

Charmed by unconscious kindness, he can tell at a distance 
the humility that comes  from a thousand small griefs;

And trusts a bit more. Drawn by the shrewdness and subtlety
of the neglected and the oppressed, who, like him, see

The powerful ones in their brutal clarity and adapt, 
who to survive, must cultivate the grace of forgiveness, and cleverness.

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Tags: grief, poem, Poetry, poets corner, rebirth