Corvus and crater
Roadside prophet, hag-stones and feathers
rattle you
along. Until evening
you find your tree, birch, spruce, or alder
to perch upon. Or curl
into wild
rose or raspberry thicket.
Tell us,
who loves the keyhole over the key?
History of defiance
Crow comes from the place where light dimples.
Mountaintops winked
away in snow’s silk
dangled by clouds, dragged across summit
until much is simply
effaced. Then
from what swirled squalls have disappeared, Crow
comes clapping
her black wings like laughter.
Erin Coughlin Hollowell is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Pause Traveler (Boreal Books, 2013) and Every Atom (Boreal Books, 2018) as well as a chapbook, Boundaries (Dancing Girl Press, 2018). Her poems have appeared most recently in EcoTheo Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Permafrost, Sugar House Review, Rust + Moth, and Prairie Schooner. She lives in Alaska, where she is the director of the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference and executive director of Storyknife, a women writers’ retreat. Find her at www.beingpoetry.net.Read poetry by Erin Coughlin Hollowell previously appearing in Terrain.org-–one poem and two poems—and read Erin’s Letter to America.
Header photo by , courtesy Pixabay.
