Doug Ramspeck, American poet, born 1953.
UNMOORED
Doug Ramspeck
My mother told me once that the night sky
was the black wing of a giant crow.
And she said that night and day were caused
by the languorous flapping of its wings. And sometimes,
in our real world, my mother fed earthly crows
peanuts or even stew beef in our backyard,
standing amid the fluttering of their dark wings,
her long black hair its own moving sail. I watched
from the kitchen window as the birds sewed the air
around her, my vantage point making it seem
that the ethereal creatures flew in and out of her body.
And she told me one night that my father wasn’t really
my father, that my true father was the giant bird
that made the night sky, and that someday soon
she and I would lift unmoored from our skin
and float into the heavens to ride my father’s back.