Statue

At the park, there’s a man built of black stone He stands shamed with an indifferent rifle that yawns at the sky His stallion is frozen in gallop, to be forever majestic In the sweltering day, the man stands In the shivering day, he finds no reprieve Lore tells; that an anchor dropped at the edge of the raven’s ocean And from the boat came bones, blood and flesh dressed in snow. Before the man was stone, he was bones and blood he was flesh white as snow and he declared the raven’s land his own. Folk says that he stood before my first cry that his horse ran the breadth of this land without tire and his rifle spoke without falter, the language of rifles. and his command, just to him and his, reveled in the shadows of unmarked graves and clipped wings By law of the weapon The raven shall want for shelter, he shall be three fifths of a man because he is bones and blood and flesh that is dressed in soot. He shall wash the stallion and feast on whatever it manures for the law of the weapon. Before my first cry, the raven forgets to be afraid and sprouts from the shadows behind the dark side of the sun. A raven’s spawn wasn’t meant for walking, In the sweltering day and shivering winds a clipped wing must grow to the sky and I, the spawn of the raven, shall never learn to fear again.