Raven Spirit

Looking up

Looking down

Looking within me

Raven Spirit follows, carries me

Through darkness at noon of night

Shaking, clutching,

lifting us to unknowable heights

My feet dangling in surrender, unbound

To shifting, untenable grounds

That once held my firmest beliefs

That rooted, transmuted my griefs

Looking up

Looking down

Looking within me

Raven Spirit ravages, disrupts me

Through slanted light of deaths dawn

Tricking, taunting

Swirling us to unimaginable survival

My heart quivering in surrender, eternal

To living, loving within impermanence

Relinquishing that which once defined my existence

Dissolved, drunken by Life’s persistence

Looking up

Looking down

Looking within me

Raven Spirit heals, transforms me

Through invisible light outside of time

Only seen as beauty

from heights of inner space

Only known as wisdom

from depths starlight within

Only felt as truth

from breadth life’s interconnectedness

Only love can be that vast,

that mysterious, that transformative

Oh Raven Spirit,

here, everywhere in the nowhere,

all at once,

May I honor your unrelenting Love

May I surrender to your teachings

May I trust my innate power you bring forth in me—to be in service to this unknowable blackness—

the vastness of this divine co-creativity

*Inspired by Mixed media collage by artist Susan King of Murphys, CA

**Poem first published in international collection of poems inspired by Corvids

Poetics: Corvids. Bainbridge Island Press, 2025 Tamara Rockwood, editor

Bainbridgeisland.press

***Photo by Phil Hutcherson of Murden cove.com