Kerry Bernatchez Poet Free verse

Red Eye Flight

In a neighbourhood that never learned my name  
I sat down on a crooked bench beside the bike path  
A crow in the branches called out wrong metallic  
like grief run through a broken radio  

I rose and walked toward it  
It didn’t fly  
It only stared  
and in its eyes I saw the world unraveling  

The dying planet  
the war child’s cry  
the sickness the hunger  
the heartbreak the neglect  

It leaned forward  
gifting me its terrible knowing  

I am feathered form of fury  
truth carried on a single beating wing  
I rise above the noise  
above the distortion  
above the lies  

I am the shadow’s witness  
fluttering at the edge of your sight  
guarding the threshold  
between what is fair  
and what is due  

The crow stepped down from the branch  
and the world bent around it  
Human body crow’s head  
one black wing rising from its left side  
like a half forgotten creation myth  

Sometimes a man sometimes a woman  
shifting like smoke  
but always the eye that sees everything  

It stood before me  
trickster creator witness  
and said in a metallic broken voice  
I am the guide  
I am the seeing  
Walk with me  

I am feathered form of fury  
truth carried on a single beating wing  
I rise above the noise  
above the distortion  
above the lies  

I am the shadow’s witness  
fluttering at the edge of your sight  
guarding the threshold  
between what is fair  
and what is due  

My eyes began to scan the world  
like lenses built from feather and fire  
seeing every boundary ripple  
where existence thins and thickens  

My arms stretched wide  
and the air answered  
wings without feathers  
feeling the edges of reality  

And when I spoke  
my voice broke open into radio  
human layered with crow  
signal layered with truth  

I was becoming the guide  

Red eye flight  
embers glowing through the night  
for the ones who cannot fight back  
the ones with no say  
no daylight  

I see the man on the bench  
still as stone  
quiet as surrender  

Is he resting  
Is he breaking  
I hover above him  
truth in the shadow  

I am feathered form of fury  
ember lit against the dying night  
I fly for the ones with no daylight  
the ones who cannot fight back  
the ones the world forgets  

My radio voice cuts through the noise  
truth carried on a single beating wing  

I am the crow headed guide reborn  
the shadow’s witness  
the ember in the corner of your eye  
guarding the threshold  
between what is fair  
and what is due  

Dawn bleeds into the sky as I descend  
ember glow fading back into feather and skin  
The bike path is empty now  
The bench is still  
The man is gone  

Only a faint ripple of air remains  
where my wing once stirred the world  

And just before the light fully arrives  
a shadow flutters  
a reminder that the crow still flies  
and I fly with it.

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