What the Ravens Know

The ravens know, and the crows—they rise and go, as frenzied mists,
With talons clinched like fists around a fallen berry or a stolen egg
They steal but never beg
They fly but without fear
And then, as if they’ve heard some song through their flapping wings,
A few among them stop to pause upon a fence post, in strange repose
And a communion that none can name or know

All animals—and angels, I suppose—partake in this solitary parlay
This delay of seeming pointlessness;
They do not think it odd to take a closing glare
To survey the land behind and stare, as if they grieve to go

They look back with conciliation, nearly sighing with acceptance—
Of what I do not know—
And then, just as suddenly, they take wing again
As if a bell has rung
As if the train has come
As if some date needs be kept

Maybe it is their sense of loss, like us,
Who see what was only in the looking back, and what true gold there was to grasp,
Among all the shimmers that invited us—

We who did not know the treasures held right there in our hungry hands
Until we had, at last, to up and go
Into the throes of the inevitable

But surely
We, too, can choose to stand head held high and still before the final bend begins
And Nature will not begrudge us, like them,
A final looking back, as sorrow and regret rise to be beat back
By wings spread in heedless hope, unrestrained,
And a heart that knows the way to go
Into a future not bereft of its own bright gold