Raven rides the windy winter sky searching for a place to rest.
Below him underneath a cape of snow the forest sleeps in silence.
He sees a single leafless oak in the middle of a meadow at the
edge of the wood and thinks he hears the sound of a piano.
In a veil of whirling snow, he drops out of the clouds to settle on
a branch and watches with intense curiosity a man and woman dancing around the tree to the sound of music they think only they can hear.
The sound is tinny and archaic, like a waltz played in a music hall
in Paris by Ravel or Debussy in the weeks before the hollow drumbeats
of the First Great War.
the ribbon of the river becomes a ribbon of butterflies
the crust of ice on the lake buckles and cracks and
islands of ice the size of freight cars break apart from
the mother continent of winter and begin to flow south towards the sun.
being rapped out with tiny mallets on ice sickles
Her eyes are closed as her partner lifts her off the ground as if she weighed no more than an armful of leaves, but she smiles when he bends over her sleeping form to unbutton her blouse with his lips
Raven wonders at the strangeness of humans as he watches
Raven rides the wide windy sky searching for a place to rest.