Noah’s Raven                                …he sent forth a raven, which went to and fro,                                until the waters were dried up from off the earth. (Genesis 8:6) most likely they’d quarreled, below decks in the deep hold of the gopher wood boat, disagreeing over strategy and purpose the old drunk, dipped in the mash of a short-tempered bully of a god, agitated by the days adrift without map or stars the bird, sleek and black, talkative, with an agile mind of her own, weary of faith and the dung-thick air, ready to improvise mountain tops, slick with silt, already exposed above the receding waters, a place, at least, to beach the sealed boat, stretch her cramped wings but the old drunk refused, oblivious to the rising stench of drowned bodies, waiting only for the prescribed emergence of vineyard bottomland so the raven was released first, quickly forgotten, nearly erased, never to be mentioned again, the one-cubit window slammed shut on leather hinges   to and fro, her wings whipped the water to vapor, feathering coordinates for a new map, charting her world through wild flight, a thankless mission from which she was not intended to return—she settled on an island peak, pecked a nit from her wing, watched for the release of the more obedient dove                                                        __________                       "Noah's Raven" appeared in the Fall 2006 issue of The Sow's Ear Poetry Review.                             Home / Escapee / Stories / Poems / Non-fiction / Contact / Links