Raven Dream Flight – April Ekphrastic Challenge

Jane Cornwell

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A raven came to me one stormy night
As I lay contemplating ending life
Taking me on a wild curious flight

First we flew through my years, where abuse ran rife
Showing me every deep unhealed wound
Then the raven took me to afterlife

We flew over the souls that abuse drowned
A pungent dead sea bordered by crushed dreams
My guide said that’s where my thoughts had be bound

She saw me flinch when hearing the seas screams
Clacked her beak knowingly as my tears fell
And flew on navigating by moonbeams

We alighted in a field of seashells
Bathing me in pearlescent healing light
She said you’ll find freedom through an inkwell

With one of my feathers you’ll demons smite
Don’t worry it will as before regrow
Heal yourself and others as you pain write

Follow the stream to the source of your flow
Learn how to unravel fates twisted thread
Where Death chooses which souls to rebirth go

The last thing I saw was Death’s smiling head
Before waking remade in a sundrenched bed

©RedCat

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Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

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My forth poem for GloPoWriMo and April Ekprastic Challenge. As in January, writing to works of art is changing my writing. How I prepare for writing, for example doing more research on mythology and symbolism. So this time I spent a while reading up more on ravens, Valkyries and Psychopomps’ and other shape shifting spirit guides.

Also I seem to write longer more intricate pieces then I usually do. :-)

Written in Terza rima, a form first known to be used by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri in Divine Comedy, completed in 1320.
It’s a three-line stanza using chain rhyme in the pattern ABA BCB CDC etc. There is no limit to the number of lines, but poems written in terza rima end with either a single line or in a couplet repeating the rhyme of the middle line of the final tercet.

Also incorporating three words from the Skyloverwordlist words: pungent, curious, sea shell.

To see all art and read all poems for today go to The Wombwell Rainbow.

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April Ekphrastic Challenge – GloPoWriMo 2021

• 1 April – Dark Orchid
• 2 April – A Dirge for the Drowned
• 3 April – Granddaughters of Red Riding Hood
• 4 April – Raven Dream Flight
• 5 April – It’s Spring Time Again and The Sweetest Wine – A Quadrille
• 6 April – There Once Was A Cat and To All The Good Girls
• 7 April – Mind Finds Soul Fearlessly Shines
• 8 April – Trapped, Imprisoned In Her Own Mind – A Triple Triolet and Ode To My Dream Girl
• 9 April – The Aurora Butterfly – A Sonnet
• 10 April – The Dawn Sky Is Ethereal Blue – A Triolet
• 11 April – Blue Forest Of Remembrance
• 12 April – Incantation to Bau-Gula – A Sonnet
• 13 April – The Stars Are Out Tonight – A Villanelle and Cat Searching High and Low
• 14 April – Shadow People Before My Eyes – A Triple Triolet
• 15 April – Three Times Three Times Three
• 16 April – Autumn feast – A Sonnet
• 17 April – In The Badger Sett
• 18 April – Hellcat
• 19 April – Life Lessons and No Bother! – A Quadrille
• 20 April – Fairy Dust Magic – A Trio Of Ovillejo’s and Crows Calling At Night
• 21 April – Polished Mirror Women – Dedicated to Marisol
• 22 April – Word Salad and A Beltane Song
• 23 April – Floating Around Everywhere and Oh Bother! – A Quadrille in Ovillejo Form
• 24 April – A Thousand Paper Cranes
• 25 April – Change and Restless Body and Mind
• 26 April – Through Hell
• 27 April – Weaving Web and Another Piece Of The Puzzel – A Puente Poem
• 28 April – Sounds In The Wind – A Puente Poem
• 29 April – Fire That Burns Away All Fears – A Sonnet and Blackbirds Dusk Sings
• 30 April – Star Prayer – A Sonnet