Our vehicles swarm in a steel hot day
Around the busy round-about
Where the highway meets Route 4.
It was there my eyes saw a raven
Arriving and defiantly posed
Folding his wings behind his back,
In the center of the berm with dead weeds,
Encircled by a wall of stone.

His eyes followed our every move;
Black like the craggy graveyards
He must have come from
(Like that stupid poem we read in school
About some creepy bird and fool).

The zig-zag of cars avoided his gaze
Amid the thump of rock and roll
And the taste of diesel fuel,
Swerving around the traffic loop,
A bottleneck for we suburbanites
For lo the many years,
Parading daily, always weary,
Drained by work or lack of sleep
Awaking from the dreamless dream,
No different than our kinsmen of before...
(Only this, and nothing more.)

The bird stands his ground in dreadful sight,
Not once to take to flight
Despite the blaring horns
From trucks howling like wolves.
As we pass we try to hide our fright-
He is both half bird and ghost
(Like that poem we once had to read
O what did it mean? What did it mean?)

How long he’ll stay we cannot know
Perched on his pulpit in the weeds,
None of us dare speak of it,
Or worship it, or seek to comprehend
Why we just don’t shoot it dead
As he croaks a word we can’t ignore
That fills us with forgotten lore
(From that poem we all deplore,
The one felt in our very core-
“Nevermore!”
“Nevermore!”)