This Mountain Scene

There is something deep and foreboding about high places and especially of those that fly there. Something more about the Raven, black as night and eyes a-piercing. So often, I've wondered what they are looking at, what it is exactly they find so interesting. Because they seem, in all places you find them, more intelligent and hardy, full of wit and quicker than most. In my poetic mind, seeing though these eyes should be so very, very facinating? So it was then, in a mountain scene, I traveled with the lonely Raven...



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Oh Raven (!) who flies black against the day
Swing your eyes downward across the land
Tell me what you see, how the forests lay
How the meadows brighten on a cool summer’s morn
How the rivers crash and cascade down cliffs shiny and gray
How the lakes slumber with fish at rest neath star-struck heavens
How the wind ruffles forest leaves across dry rock beds
How herds of elk bed down in fields of high green grass
Tell me Raven all you perceive!

Oh Raven (!) who sits perched high above
Swing your eyes downward across the land
Tell me what you hear, how the sounds play
How they whistle and croak, hoot and holler
How they hem and haw, creak and groan
How they bugle and growl, bubble and gurgle
How they whisper and sigh, murmur and cry
How they moan like the glacier, breathe like the forest
How they sing like the ocean, purr like the bubbling brook
How they resonate and hum, suffer and grieve
Tell me Raven all you perceive!

Oh Raven (!) who dances on currents of wind
Swing your eyes downward across the land
Tell me what you think, how your mind works
What you see in Moon’s eyes when she peers at you
What you know of the stars, the way they swim in darkness
What you grasp of life, how it begins and ends
What you pray to and believe, what god you may have
What you ponder of when lone on mountaintop
What you wonder of this mountain scene
Tell me Raven all you perceive!

Oh Raven (!) who swoops above sharpened ridgeline
Swing your eyes downward across the land
Tell me where you go, what emotions you have witnessed
What birth has wrought to mothers grasp, the fear and happiness
What courage you have seen in the face of hungry wolves
What lonely onlooker you have spied facing sunfire’s death and her colours
What smiling fool you have sighted screaming and hollering success
What laughing coyotes you have spoken too about the coming freeze
Tell me Raven all you perceive!

Oh Raven (!) who is sheltered from these low places
Swing your eyes downward across the land
Tell me of your home; show me these high places in the snows
Where thunder and lightening bicker like an old couple
Where storm lays down wind and rain, washes the land of dirt and grim
Where big things seem tiny, just echoes you can barely hear
Where life is not lonely, it is full and hungering
Where days are not in hours, but in the comings of morning and the leavings of day
Where things are not always free, not always tied to a warm, gentle green
Where you are steadfastly at watch, eyes ever in concert with nature
This Raven who understands this wild place
Telling me all that he perceives with such honesty and grace
I, for one, wish I had wings and could fly black against the day