Two Poems from Haines

Contemplating a Raven with Nora Dauenhauer

He’s not a god,
she says,

and I wonder how he could be,
this mangy raven hopping
amid the gravel and weeds
outside the ferry terminal,
beak and feathers matted with grey
gasoline mist floating in from the channel.

He’s not a nice guy,
she says,
and it’s true.
He ushers in daybreak at four
with screams of insane laughter,
neighborhood gossip in the high
spruce limbs above sleepy windows.

Perhaps he has learned a thing or two
about mischief from Stellar’s jays—
those inkblots, raiders—
the Rorschach tests of ornitho-psychology;
birds of theft and conquest
and pure blue-black id.

At Raven House, he is barely present,
crowded out by a plastic rockinghorse
nesting in the garden weeds,
piles of mismatched dishes cluttering
a dilapidated sideboard, the paraphernalia
of a suburban garage in 1973 welcoming
visitors from the porch. I do not hear
his crackling caw there.

But I see him, looming, totemic,
huge with turquoise eyes.
He steals a mug inscribed in memory
of a boat that sank on its maiden voyage,
caught fire and sank, for which they gave a potlatch
on the beach. From the mug, Raven
pecks coffeeseednettles or spruce tip
ale and salmon roe in transparent membranous sacks,
pours a gluey line of seal oil across
the threshold and says,
My ancestors welcome you to this place.