Raven \ At Ingonish

Nancy: And still Raven goes down the bay, sun or storm, our constant companion.

Raven

Raven flew in one side of my head,

black in the white silence.  Raven

flew into the landscape behind my eyes,

and shook his electric feathers.

He flew in one side of my head

and he flew out again, on his own business.

Nothing to him that his wings write black weather,

and that the silence closes behind him

with the sound of thunder.

Nothing to Raven, gone down the bay,

that the thunder flies on, bearing his name.

Alan: From a long-ago trip to Nova Scotia.  Its exuberant language owes a debt to David Kresh, a wonderful poet who died too soon.

At Ingonish

At Ingonish the sea

fingers a fiddler’s choice on the cliffs

and the lake

frets a banjo breakdown on the longnecked barrachois.

Some law here keeps the salt stone from the fresh.

The cormorant and kingfisher wheel, ungeared, unmeshed,

round the hubs of bream and brash,

their world’s end at these rocks,

the jack pine, dune grass sharper than a fence.