Poems by Dana Ravyn

I MOVED HERE SO AUDRE LORDE
WOULD BE MY NEIGHBOR

I built my home
in a taciturn chestnut tree
so close to the end of earth
that its mahogany eyeballs
sometimes roll over
the edge, toppling to extinction.

It is held up by stanchions
that get their strength
from the grace of weakness,
like the pneumatized bones
of chickadee wings.

At dawn, I wake to green
sounds that erase dreams.
I watch chestnuts plummet
to their death, their spiny
anger skin splits, revealing
glimmering spheres of adulation.


SUPPLICATION

when i burned your photo
it was not in effigy.
there was no more room
for your image
in my heart,
occupied now with
navigating white-knuckle
rapids of rivers
flowing backward.
Only the ashes fit.
they float
like orphan eyelashes
into retreating crevices
of memory.
as i held the glossy
corner to the flame,
a supplication to time:
erode this anguish
as slowly, as deliberately
as egyptian granite.
deep, to reveal
veins of gold.


CROWS

call me back from reverie,
entreaties echoing from
dangling drops of rain
to reach me.

if I awaken, I can dream
of black barbs of feathers,
follow each to a bony quill,
then deeper yet,

into inky thews. Entwined in
sinew, my heart canters as
wings thrash into cawing
freedom of oblivion.


WHAT REMAINS

The ocean returned
to claim the sleeping
in plain day,

foretold to me
in dreams of
prescient dragon flies.

Bargello veins pulsed
in cellophane wings,
droning in and out of

shafts of light,
framed by private
nebulas of dust.

There are still remnants
of magic free from
weighted words,

and cell towers poke
from a new sea, a landing place
for blue dragon flies.