Crow, Pt. 2

A crow that's being dreamed
 By a child who's being carried through the forest
 Sleeping, wondering in her twilight half-awareness
 Where her mother went
 I know that you died
 But in this child's crow dream you survive
 Beneath layers of magical symbolic wild animals
 Inhabiting the edges of our fogged-over consciousnesses
 Grasping for something to hold
 Something old
 Like a name cut into a stone
 Or a bird that will make eye contact
 ♪
 That's where you live now
 Or at least that's where I hold you
 And we're still here without you
 Sleeping and the sun's coming up
 In the ruins of our household, we wake up again
 Coming back into this
 Every day that comes, the echo of you living here gets quieter
 Obscured by the loud wind of us now
 Wailing and moaning for you
 But also living, talking about school
 Making food, just surviving and still containing love
 Waking up again, the baby that you knew is now a kid
 And when she looks at me with your eyes the shape of almonds
 I am stirred inside and reemerge
 I go downstairs and turn on CBC and make some coffee
 And boil two eggs and make two pieces of bread into toast
 And open the window and give the child some clothes
 And get us sitting at the table
 Where your chair still sits across from me, watching
 I stand up to put on music
 Our daughter sees and asks for mama's record
 And she's staring at the speaker with this look of recognition
 Putting it together that it's you singing
 I'm sobbing and eating eggs again
 You're a quiet echo on loud wind
 But when I'm trying to, I see you everywhere
 In plants and birds and in our daughter
 In the sun going down and coming up and in whatever
 And the myths that used to get told around the fire
 Where a seal's head pokes up through from underwater
 Crossing a threshold between two worlds, yours and mine
 We were skeletally intertwined once
 But now I notice ravens instead
 I don't see you anywhere
 If you still hang in the branches
 Like burnt wood, I will go out beneath
 ♪
 With arms reached and run my fingers through the air
 Where you breathed, touching your last breath
 Reaching through to the world of the gone with my hand empty