Elizabeth Vrenios

Gifts from my Son

(published in MockingHeart Review)

He gave me ravens
who brought me flowers shaped like skateboards
fat and slick-ripe full of joy
who splintered  sunlight
who crushed borders
who imagined themselves wolves
who doubted their wing span
who flew anyway

He gave me ravens

who rode from Schenectady to Syracuse in a glass coach
who spoke all languages
who spoke none at all
who carried light in a bucket full of holes
who said they weren’t afraid of one and twenty
who lied

who gave me London with secrets still in doorways
who gave me the fleeting leap of a red squirrel
who played guitars on starlit corners
who locked broken doors
who opened broken prayers

He gives me ravens

whose voices shimmer on river rocks
whose voices stray like homemade kites
loosed from their tethers in the clouds
whose voices I still seek in the fog
whose voices are like the moment a star closes its light
whose voice wounds heaven with a single cry

He is the raven

who falls from trains

who falls from a trillion trees
who falls from flames and ashes
cracked and broken
who plumages to earth with a tortured trail
whom I always seek in the cavity I call my heart
            and in the dreams I wake from
                        weeping