Crow spreads his sure, silken wings
and enfolds the child
with the blue moon eyes
and rests there, holding
the infant in his embrace
offers her sweet plump fig
in memory of the departed
to comfort the child
and to draw from her red skin
the ache feeding on her lungs
but the fruit remains unseen
begins to decay in the bellows within
and crow departs, returns
bearing fat wine-coloured grapes
and golden peaches
while the child, laced in white socks
and perfectly-pleated tartan
rejects the fruit, starves
in the gaze of her wasteland, drawing
rings around her disguise
and a thousand moons blaze
while crow revisits, again, and again
to nest in the murky water
of the decaying, layered deposits of her lungs
while the compost grows a scar
and rotations of sun beget a woman
handcuffed to blisters, shrivelled
dry, a walking desert
as crow’s faithfulness shifts
to picking at the bloodied organ of her heart
she cries in outrage
her stubborn courage clothed inflexibly
in darkness and shame
while crow proceeds to devour her
from the inside out
clinging to the metal scaffolding
of enslavement, cold
and rigid as a mountain
she stands firm,
voting instead for the familiar cheap seats
until one day she stares back into
the womb of crow’s earnest black eyes
and sees pleading, praying,
a pilgrimage to the kernel
of the dripping emerald forest
like the landscape of her heart
its carpet, moist and chaotic
she has endured
surviving the howling tempests
that crush and raze with fury
an identity, a woodland,
fluid and open, free
and unshackled by dark dishonour
nourished by networks of tall tree friends
clad in contours of breathing green
she wakes,
while crow takes flight
