Anam Cara

Raid

Night would not let me in,

without sleep, days turned grey

and empty, lying in wait

until the raven comes.

Her wings close my skull

in festered grip, her beak

breaks through the shell,

picks at the yolk of memory,

garbles up the vowels that cried

my childhood out, held my father’s death,

sucks into the crevice of her breath

the secrets I had kept,

makes vacant what is intimate.

Of a swoop, she is into flight,

the beat of feather oars slowly

break the air but leave no trace.

High above intricacies of marsh

to some unknown blackthorn

she ferries her ragged coffin,

doomed to become the grief

she so naively thieved.