tara caribou + Michael Raven | ©2021
artwork ©2021 | tara caribou, used with permission
through the damp wood
dim and heavy,
humid with the tears
of Danu’s children
from ere they dwelt
in their mounds,
where betwixt and ‘tween
the misty veils
lies a fortress forbidding
bare and stark
built of
black mud,
river boulder,
bone and feather
in single file dressed
all alike,
black robed and solemn,
they
walk the pathway
climb the tower
up the stairway
‘round cold bricks about my heart
tight, so tight, i cannot breathe!
worms trying to
shatter those stones
reshape my world, theirs
yet…
‘neath the soul’s window
on the ledge
there stands a raven
black and dark
her feathers silky
beak so sharp
eyes that glitter
in the night
upon stairs tread
by boots of traitors
line they then
of one accord
first the one
and then the other
bend a knee
lift arcane stave
as one voice
murmur dark curses
known only to those
across the vales
all at once
with sudden vigor
raven surges upon her wings
takes to air
caws and cries
an eerie shouting
a dismal spell all her own
to their horror
and great amazement
notice they,
the twelve of cloak,
within her claw
she holds a blade of silver
etched with runes
they cannot bear
rending these speckled sill
maggot interlopers asunder,
them vying for a premature seat
at the funeral feast
This is a collaborative effort with Tara Caribou, who provided the starting material which we both built from over the course of several editing periods over the past few weeks. After reading her initial suggestion, I felt it should appear as a seamless piece that could have multiple authors, or a single author. She may have had other goals — we hadn’t discussed that element during the process of creation. That goal, in my opinion, was largely met with the results above, although I suspect you could probably extract who did what if you really wanted to make such an effort. I honestly wouldn’t waste your time doing so — you’ll just get annoyed because it isn’t by stanza and I won’t admit to anything.
I’m very pleased with the results and look forward to working with Tara in the future (assuming she’ll continue put up with me and my weird habits of notetaking on other writers’ writing and abstract, nonsensical comments).
As always, I am interested in collaborative efforts, should you wish — be it with fiction, poetry, music, or some combination of all of the above. It makes a different part of the creative mind work than that which creates solo efforts, and I feel it has the potential to make both participants better at what they do as a part of their overall growth. It won’t always work, sadly, and I will honestly (and yet politely) say so if it comes to that — but we’ll never know if we don’t attempt to work together.
