Do You Hear the Raven Call?

A wingspan of ash, she scours the sky for signs of a way forward.

Beneath, the writhing landscape of a future so foreign we cannot yet comprehend which color she will be.

Her last scream echoes,

Where azure jeweled sky and jade-dappled leaves once spread beneath, 

A shattering of a mosaic meant to be shattered.

What Vermont used to mean: the green mountain state

Where the-river-of-once-vibrant-pebbles overflows, the grove of white ash haunts, 

Lies a future unknown and unlearned; 

In our worst fears, unseen, with a silent and ravenless sky. 

Alone she holds in weary irises a reflection of her Vermont: the charred mountain state, 

choaked in drought and drowned in flood.

I speak for my generation when I say: We are scared. 

We cry to take to the skies and follow her call for an answer to this riddle of death: 

How will we perish 

and how long can I pretend Vermont will keep her green? 

What is it I hope for? That we may come to know future, in her cunning viel and exposed skin? 

That skin  . . . which lingers in every dream– teasing with answers– and beckoning us to fall forward with her. 

If only we paint over the scar, sear her memory far beneath the heart– 

into a cavern so endless that raven call morphs into a seeping echo– 

sounding like the last of glacier sea ice as it flows out to sea. 

And so we make a point to push her memory far beneath our veins

 like coiled springs,

 buckling under backbreaking pressure.

Because accepting the unknown will bring us careening down as a raven dives? 

Together we forge barriers– because knowing seems too painful, too scary to tuck in our wings and breathe and descend.

Together we forge barriers– Despite their broken natures of glass panes and clear plastic, 

Shade and deep ocean–

That cannot and will not accept the unknown,

But cannot block the light of truth. 

The few that discover the dive–

Send sunbursts and sunsets 

To penetrate the broken barriers–

And fight the viel

Which drapes across the sky like a raven in flight,

In her last flight over green mountains that have lost meaning to their name.

A wingspan speckled with stars, she scours the sky and sees a way forward.

Beneath, stirs a future so familiar it wakes ancestral trickery 

almost lost in the hearts of wounded wolves.

Her first song cries out

To whom she thought was lost forever– 

And the first howls back. 

They hear the raven call.

Do you hear the raven call?

As she swoops through her favorite future, 

Diving past ruby brushstrokes at dawn,

Soaring through an emerald midsummer day, 

And ascending into the sapphire sea of stars,

Back to the sun with Crow to regain the rainbow–

All on the 200th anniversary of a clear-cut state. 

Do you hear the raven call?

Eyes closed, soaring above our home, 

So faithful the forests remain beneath her. 

And so I hear the raven call and I smile. 

I hear her hope.