i.
the icelandic word
gluggaveður
loosely translates to
“window weather”
and how fitting
for that day
in early april

ii.
when a sinister shape
took my window, all
rook and malice,
primordial sound-terror
echolalia caw, caw, aw
and perched on the
plateau of my garage —

iii.
•scanning, scanning•
buttonblack were his eyes,
obsidian
and carrioncrazed!
the raven slid his talons
pianist-like across the shingles

iv.
but of course there
he could not stay
forever
when in flesh
he must delight
ravenous
at the dinner-time
of night

gone, gone, on

v.
liminal memory, this
springtime coda
where there is no
apparition
for a
floral moment
only,

until

vi.
an inseparation
of feather and fur
and cotton
tale
return
———
unnatural
nature
———
there is primordial movement
at play as the raven drives his
scythe into the earth-
colored fur
again and a
gain

vii.
muscles convulse
an instinctual hopping
in the legs
hopping
the word sounds juvenile
unjust
easter bunny, plasticine
when really

viii.
(again a gain)
a taut line of newborn blood
crimsons the scene

ferocious movement
(again a gain)
an attempt to flee

a failure
(again a gain)

the moments mutating
lost to something
larger

an imaginary memoir

ix.
i am all body and fire / all pain / all of a few weeks old and taking my first steps out in the larger world of lush lawn (so good it felt — still wet with the morning, and so good i felt — boisterous and headstrong and ready) / how could / i know / how could / i possibly know / what was waiting up there / that cawmaw up there / that specter / up there / like an undulating stretch of sea / so intelligent and tumultuous / and centuries old / asteroid-old / ragnarok-old / that monster / bleakbeak manifestation / caught in its clutches and fight! please fight for there is no alternative / was it you were born for this fate / and / if / so / better not to be born at all?

stillness now / just hold / still / perhaps it is just a moment to laugh about later
perhaps it is just a dream after all

x.
and now?
nothing

no lucky foot
left
there
no body
there

nothing
except a
roof &
viscera-shaped
loneliness

and my
memories

and this
bitter
work of
gluggaveður

remain.

---

Image is “Twilight” by Tommy Hilding. Please consider looking through this artist’s amazing collection. This piece was an inspiration of mine as I worked through this poem.

I hope everyone is unthawing.