Raven Poem for C. Dale Young

.

Letter to Mitsui from Paradise Lodge


Mountain huckleberries blaze up
as they should in late September,

red sealing wax
on the folds of Tahoma.

At dawn, a charcoal turbulence
of wings over the roofline.

Look, hawks, said two boys below.
I leaned out my window, told them,

No, they're ravens. Every child
should learn to recognize that trickster

who brought us moon and sun and stars.
Remember the story? Raven disguised

as a pine needle, then a young boy,
crying for the bright fire hoarded

in the old man's cedar boxes, light cascading
down to earth when grandfather gave in?

Autumn valleys sizzled with ash and spirea,
a pearly haze of everlasting seedheads.

Raven escaped through the smokehole,
smudging his feathers black,

the color of your hair
back when you taught me

how to gather the seeds of words,
carry a box of portable flames.

I write on stone with a fresh match
as sparks wing from the chimney.

An arc of cedar smoke becomes
the milky way, the germinating stars.