I push everything I know off to the side.
For a moment I watch these two predators,
fiddling and flapping, bracing on thick branches; letting go
in the stiffening foliage of my ash tree.
It’s November. They are black as Syrian oil.
I listen to their dialog, caw resonates deep in the gullet.
Like the ruffle of shuffling playing cards, it starts slow,
punctuated by the final fan-slap as the last card folds the deck,
then the quiet roulette of dealer’s hands.
“Caw,” is the end of a sentence.
I do not speak raven, or bird.
But in this aging moment, I wish I did.
I imagine what they might’ve said: Passion, a bargain?
Scolding or rolled eyes over chores - the day’s divvying seed collection,
Fluffing the nest? Who was wrong: who was right?
One to the other, over the fussing,
and how significant or not,
it would all mean, in the end.
I wonder if I could speak raven,
a dialect of Bird, one of thousands,
perhaps, tens or hundreds of thousands.
No. Millions. And if I could begin –
even just begin nothing more for now
– to understand, what new worlds?
© Melinda Rizzo
Syria air strikes: Trump defends claiming 'mission accomplished'
Melinda Rizzo lives, works, cooks, gardens and writes poems in a 200-year-old farmhouse in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, USA. She has been a freelance reporter for more than 20 years.
