Ravens (live)

In October 2015, I was out in the yard

I'd just finished splitting up the scrap two-by-fours into kindling

I glanced up at the half moon, pink, chill refinery cloud light

Two big blackbirds flew over, their wings whooshing and low

Two ravens

But only two

Their black feathers tinted in the sunset

I knew these birds were omens but of what I wasn't sure

They were flying out toward the island where we hoped to move

You were probably inside

You were probably aching, wanting not to die

Your body transformed

I couldn't bear to look so I turned my head west

Like an early death

Now I can only see you on the fridge in lifeless pictures

And in every dream I have at night

And in every room I walk into

Like here, where I sit the next October

Still seeing your eyes

Pleading and afraid, full of love

Calling out from another place because you're not here

I watched you die in this room, then I gave your clothes away

I'm sorry, I had to

And now I'll move

I will move with our daughter

We will ride over water

With your ghost underneath the boat

What was you is now burnt bones

And I cannot be at home

I'm running, grief flailing

The second time I went to Haida Gwaii was just me and our daughter

Only one month after you died, my face was still contorted

Driving up and down, boots wet inside, aimless and weeping

I needed to return to the place where we discovered that childless, we could blanket ourselves in the moss there for our long lives

But when we came home you were pregnant

And then our life together was not long

You had cancer and you were killed and I'm left living like this

Crying on the logging roads with your ashes in a jar

Thinking about the things I'll tell you

When you get back from wherever it is that you've gone

But then I remember death is real

And I'm still here in Masset. It's August 12th, 2016

You've been dead for one month and three days and we are sleeping in the forest

There is sand still in the blankets from the beach

Where we released you from the jar

When we wake up, all the clothes that we left out are cold and damp just from the air permeating

The ground opens up

Surrounded by growth

Nurse logs with layers of moss and life, young cedars, the sound of water, thick salal, and god-like huckleberries

The ground absorbs and remakes whatever falls

Nothing dies here

But here is where I came to grieve, to dive into it with you, with your absence

But I keep picking you berries