Ravens

In October 2015, I was out in the yard
 I just finished splitting up the scrap two-by-fours into kindling
 Glanced up at the half moon pink chill refinery cloud light
 Two big blackbirds flew over, their wings whooshing and low
 Two ravens, but only two
 Their black feathers tinted in the sunset
 I knew these birds were omens but of what I wasn't sure
 They were flying out toward the island where we hoped to move
 You were probably inside
 You were probably aching, wanting not to die
 Your body transformed
 I couldn't bear to look so I turned my head west
 Like an early death
 Now I can only see you on the fridge in lifeless pictures
 And in every dream I have at night
 And in every room I walk into
 Like here, where I sit the next October
 Still seeing your eyes
 Pleading and afraid, full of love
 Calling out from another place because you're not here
 I watched you die in this room then I gave your clothes away
 I'm sorry, I had to
 Now I'll move
 ♪
 I will move with our daughter
 We will ride over water
 With your ghost underneath the boat
 What was you is now but bones
 And I cannot be at home
 I'm running, reef flailing
 The second time I went to Haida Gwaii it was just me and our daughter
 Only one month after you died my face was still contorted
 Driving up and down, boots wet inside, aimless and weeping
 I needed to return to the place where we discovered that
 Childless, we could blanket ourselves in the moss there
 For our long lives
 But when we came home you were pregnant
 And then our life together was not long
 You had cancer and you were killed
 And I'm left living like this
 Crying on the logging roads with your ashes in a jar
 Thinking about the things I'll tell you
 When you get back from wherever it is that you've gone
 But then I remember death is real
 And I'm still here in Masset
 It's August 12th, 2016
 You've been dead for one month and three days
 And we are sleeping in the forest
 There is sand still in the blankets from the beach
 Where we released you from the jar
 When we wake up, all the clothes that we left out are cold and damp just from the air permeating
 The grounds opens up
 Surrounded by growth
 Nurse logs with layers of moss and life
 Beyond the cedars, the sound of water
 Thick salal
 And God like huckleberries
 The ground absorbs and remakes whatever falls
 Nothing dies here
 But here is where I came to grieve
 To dive into it with you
 With your absence
 But I keep picking you berries