Raven Rain

Ravens sweep the sky, wheeling
and tumbling stringless black kites,
until the sky weeps with impudent
little tikes, whose sooty wings stir
up a storm like dust, each curious eye
a piercing stud of black diamante,
until the clouds break. By afternoon,
the earth is damp and green and lush,
and somewhere a blackbird in a bush
sings an animated after-rainstorm tune,
counterpoint to the cocky caw
of a departing raven’s ‘Nevermore’.

Kim M. Russell, 27th May 2020

Common Raven Cawing On Rock High-Res Stock Photo - Getty Images

My response to Poets and Storytellers United Weekly Scribblings #21: Anagrams

Magaly greets us with a prompt inspired by Craig Santos Perez’s delightful ‘Ars Pasifika’, with which I’ve fallen in love:

when the tide
of silence
rises
say “ocean”
then with the paddle
of your tongue
rearrange
the letters to form
“canoe”

She invites us to write new poetry or prose using anagrams—a word, phrase, or sentence formed from another by rearranging its letters.

29 thoughts on “Raven Rain”

  2. I love the depiction of ravens as “stringless black kites” I could visualize them freewheeling across a darkening sky. And the dissonance between the caw and the song.

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  5. I might’ve already asked you this, but in a case I haven’t I will ask again: Have you read Bellman & Black, by Diane Setterfield? Your poem makes me yearn for another reading of that exquisite novel. Her ravens say and do so much more than convention might expect, and the same is true about yours. It reads like he adored lovechild of Bellman & Black and “The Raven”–mysterious and telling, and so luscious in its imagery.

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  9. What a lovely poem – I adore watching crows/ravens and I’ve read several novels about them. Love “stringless black kites” and they really do look like that here in the mountains where we have a lot of wind. Nicely penned!

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  11. I too like the after rain effects. The fresh looks, the ozone smells, and Nature’s creatures songs. I had to look up the word. “diamante”. A super great choice. Mrs. Jim knew the word but had forgotten its meaning. Three semesters of college French thirty years ago is somewhat faded. We would have been in France again had it the Corona Virus not shown up.
    ..

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