Raven

Copyrighted © 2006 by G. Rosin
All rights reserved

Raven left this shadow. 

Another prank, 
Maybe even an omen. 
It’s hard to tell 

why the fence looks—scorched, 
as if a great explosion 

caught Raven, changing, 
still shifting shape, somewhere 
between man and bird, 

etched this riddle into 
the grain and knots of life, 

captured in wood, 
slats and slots of memory, 
gathering ashes, 

holding on to what finds it— 
all those slivers of something, 

something that tears the flesh. 

Credit Notes:

This pairing of poem and photograph was published previously within Parallax Views at the author’s website, and appears here with his permission.

The poem was also published in Legal Studies Forum (Volume 22, Number 2, 2008).

The photograph is from Fence Shadows, Rosin’s series of photos of crepe-myrtle shadows on backyard fences at his family’s house.

Gary S. Rosin’s

poetry and haiga have appeared, or are forthcoming, in various literary and poetry magazines such as Concho River Review, Failed Haiku, Harbinger Asylum, KYSO Flash, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Poetry24, The Legal Studies Forum, and Visions International; as well as in several anthologies, including Faery Footprints (Fae Corp Publishing), Lifting the Sky: Southwestern Haiku & Haiga (Dos Gatos Press), Texas Poetry Calendar (Kallisto Gaia Press), Untameable City: Poems on the Nature of Houston (Mutabilis Press), and elsewhere.

His poem “Viewing the Dead” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Two of his poems appear in Silent Waters, photographs by George Digalakis (Athens, 2017). He is the author of two chapbooks, Standing Inside the Web (Bear House Publishing, 1990) and Fire and Shadows (Legal Studies Forum, 2008) (offprint).

Selections of Gary’s poetry and photography can be found at his website, 4P Creations: http://4pcreations.com