RAVENS AS GIFTS

He gave me ravens 

who brought me flowers shaped like skateboards
fat and slick-ripe full of joy
who splintered  sunlight
who crushed borders
who imagined themselves wolves
who doubted their wing span
who flew anyway 

He gave me ravens

who rode from Schenectady to Syracuse in a glass coach
who spoke all languages
who spoke none at all
who carried light in a bucket full of holes
who said they weren’t afraid of one and twenty
who lied

who gave me London with secrets still in doorways
who gave me the fleeting leap of a red squirrel
who played guitars on starlit corners
who locked broken doors
who opened broken prayers

He gives me ravens

whose voices shimmer on river rocks 
whose voices stray like homemade kites
loosed from their tethers in the clouds 
whose voices I still seek in the fog
whose voices are like the moment a star closes its light 
whose voice wounds heaven with a single cry

He is the raven

who falls from trains
who falls from a trillion trees 
who falls from flames and ashes 
cracked and broken
who plumages to earth with a tortured trail
whom I always seek in the cavity I call my heart
         and in the dreams I wake from
                   weeping

Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Vrenios resides in Mendocino, California.  She is fond of lyric poems and has written most of her life, excelling now after retiring from a long singing and academic career. Her award-winning chapbook, Special Delivery, was published in the spring of 2016. Nominated for 2 Pushcart awards, she has poems published in various anthologies including Stories of Music, Hudson Review, Poeming Pigeon, Passager, NILVX, Unsplendid, and The American Journal of Poetry. She is delighted to be back in MockingHeart Review! Her second volume of poetry, Empty the Ocean with a Thimble, was released in April by Word Tech Communications.