California hills gone gold, summer sky
blue enough to confuse, so clear, so sharp
the contrast. But there should always be three
you say, and here I’ve said only yellow
clipped by imponderable blue—you missed it
taking flight from a field of Spanish wheat
hackles streaked with blood: black sweep of raven
leaving behind a picked-over carcass;
raven who they say hunts with wolves and waits
beside battlefields for the fallen to die
who they say can forecast rain, who created
rivers and seas, who they say once sat
at the sides of gods, whose white was burned black
for stealing the sun and setting its light
in a sky like this; raven whose croaks and caws
when we’re walking alone in the woods
remind us we are tethered to this earth
in ways that all of our gods are not.