Crow
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About this ebook
PRAISE FOR JAMIE PARSLEY’S POETRY
________________________________________
“Jamie Parsley’s poems are so evocative, so lonely, so understated, that I admire them very much. One of his best talents is avoiding wordiness—a mistake so common to many poets, in my opinion. The reader feels very comfortable fitting himself into the silences of Jamie’s poems.”
—Jon Hassler, author of North of Hope and Staggerford
“The feeling [in Jamie Parsley's poems] is warm and open and good. . .a good feeling all around. Given his years—notable.”
—Cid Corman, editor of Origin magazine and author of And the Word
Jamie Parsley
Jamie Parsley is an accomplished and award-winning poet and Episcopal priest He is the author of twelve books of poems, one book of short fiction and, since 2004, has been an Associate Poet Laureate of North Dakota.
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Crow - Jamie Parsley
ONE
At the edge of the darkness
"on the margin
of eternity"
—R.S. Thomas
Hawk Ridge
It was a gasp—
a winter breath—
we heard first.
A steady mantra
came from
someplace
beyond us and yet
around us all at once.
Then the shadow came,
cold and black—
a strong body and a caress
of air moving against
the fog, against
the persistent restlessness
that came up from a place
below us. The shadow went on
beyond us who squinted
into the gray slate of the day,
measuring it as it rose,
circled,
fell,
then rose again—
perfect and precise over
the churning dark waters.
Stony Point
The wind moves not
toward here but away,
up the shore from this
gathering of boulders
and this one lone pine,
its skeletal roots exposed
to the upward grasp
of the water.
I will leave here
one day never to return.
I will get up from this place
I called my own and never
again and make my way back,
not leaving any trace of myself behind—
not one thing that stone-
cold tides and persistent
winters can’t dispose of.
Even then, it will be good
to go from here
and to be truly gone—
to not leave anything
that can be traced or
examined or exposed
like this day was
once the sun unveils itself.
It will be enough to be
as the wind is in this place,
an exhausting presence
that completely fills the air
and then is gone.
It will be good to be
as the clouds I remember
hanging above me that first day
I came here. They have been
replaced by ghostly shadows
I find familiar
and yet strangely distant
in a familial sort of way.
The wind moves not
toward here but away,
up the shore toward that place
I have been headed toward
all my life.
This
The gray mist moves
silently against a seemingly
unlimited stretch of
almost indistinguishable
water. The slightest
breeze—steady
as a heartbeat—
nudges the fog
forward. As it does
I gasp—
my breath fogging
the window pane
with ghostly
zeroes. I lean
close and try
to listen
to what
it says.
Is it a whisper—
a gasp of exhaustion
panted into the soft
flesh of the earth—
made even more
tender by dew and
the remnants of
last night’s drizzle?
As much as I fight it,
I force myself
to turn—to close
the curtains and
to turn from
the window
into the white-
walled room that
surrounds me,
welcoming me and
making me feel
as though
I am
who I am
just once
more again.
Marin
He has become
deformed. He knows
it even without
a reflection
or a shadow
at his feet to
gauge himself. The wind,
he knows, has
formed him into
something shapeless—
something boneless
and pliable.
Walking in
the dark above
the cliffs,
the wind and
the water working
at his flesh, he hears
over the howl
of ocean
louder howls—
drunken and
wordless. At the edge
of the darkness, there
is a circle of pale
light. A sturdy
black shadow—
peakéd and angular.
A house, with its walls
low against the earth.
And as he draws
closer, he sees
a circle of cars about
it, the aluminum
in their headlights
reflecting the light
falling