Welcome to The RavensPerch

After my blood’s drawn, I need food and drink, but pause at art in the hospital lobby; none of these paintings are of blood, though one has deep red. a few cubists, some colorful landscapes, nearby a sign: Blood Drawing This Way>>> In the cafeteria over...

pace silently back and forth, in a muddy chain-link pen, crouch silently when I come near, watch with yellow eyes. You should roam forests, call mates, howl at the moon. Here you howl and pace all night. People do these things, slaughter and capture wolves, buffalo,...

For Evans Our skis barely made a sound on snow Probably we’ll find out when we get home. A curtain of snow blew down from white pines I’m sure she’ll call right away. We cut a trail through fresh snow It’s good to be out. I think he’s gone now. Maybe I shouldn’t have...

your hairs on the blanket, still this morning your food in the fridge, still this morning your warmth echoing in my heart, still this morning your nose print on the sliding glass door, still this morning your spirit gently lingers, still this...

there was a softness of your leaving that touched my heart it was how you lived your life softly entering my life as a three-month-old kitten with a tiny mew your extra toes making your paws into soft, white mittens your playfulness right up through your years all the...

it’s shocking how much closer we got, even in this last week as if the walls of our hearts melted and we were one when I was able to let go of sadness and become love our hearts beat together and we comforted each other in this impending grief

for now I can fool myself that you’re in another room or just somewhere out of sight nearby and with each moment I get a bit of respite from sorrow but it will become more difficult as the day goes on and you don’t appear to sit on my lap or mew for your meal and as...

The dog came over to tip upright and put his paws on my knee to better stare into my face. His ears trembled like petals in a breeze. I went on reading, as if the poems concealed some illuminating lesson which would render life worthwhile. A moment passed, then he...

Nishi Hongwanji, Kyoto Our time in Kyoto was a frenzy of trains and cramped soba bars where my elbows felt immense as drifting continents. On every sidewalk, collisions with pullulated humanity dashing to salvage the wrecks of their lives were avoided narrowly if at...

Can a man become more whole than his father was? Before he dies, can he learn to hate fewer things than he was taught to as a child? The blind seeds of this worldview are smooth from passing between all the rough hands down my lineage to me, as if they were the last...

I was on a train daily when all I could write were trains, and when the air is thick with falling leaves, they land in my every poem. The world has so many faces, and each may seem the whole while you stare, like a predator making eye contact with the wings of a...

A swan, His neck a staircase into The white clouds, Wings, oars Of silk, Toiling Against The waves of Water, Another swan, Their necks Folded as beads Of pearly foam, They envelop Themselves Into snowy landscape, A rose blossoms, Untamed blood Of love, They swim...

The ice pack on Huron lives in a universe that doesn’t care a breath and pulse feeding on cold and wind the Arctic bred water surrendering to another life in silence growing white and slow a movement of snowshoe sinking down into music a crack of light on crust one...