Ravenna

(Photo: BlackJack the crow who sometimes visits outside my window)

Once upon a Monday gloomy
I tried my best to call love to me
Alas, ‘twas doomed to ever fail
I called instead a coffin nail

And while I looked upon this sign of woe
It came to be there was a crow
He was a bird as black as night
With glowing eyes that gave me fright

Yet ‘twas his ominous appeal
That caused my very mind to reel
In scratchy voice he croaked the phrase
That death would come in seven days

He asked me not to search for love
I called him daft, an evil dove
I should have listened to the bird
But ignorance I much preferred

I went about my way unhindered
Thinking not of words birds tendered
I called to all who passed my way
Words of love and hoped to sway


I met a woman called Ravenna
With night black hair and eyes of henna
Slender as an aspen tree
Graceful as a cat was she

We loved and wed within the week
And of the bird I did not speak
But soon Ravenna grew quite pale
Each day she weakened and seemed to fail

Her hair once black was turning grey
Her eyes of henna tuned to clay
She could not speak of aught but heaven
And died by the gloomy day of seven

And when I laid her in the ground
And covered up her coffin mound
It chanced to be there was a feather
Black as night among the heather

It smelled of sweet Ravenna’s hair
I held it as I spoke a prayer
I never saw the crow again
But now I use the feather for a pen