Necrowmancy

by Gabriel Wainio-Théberge

Bong!  
Mist-morning bell

Caw!  Summer’s death-knell
nods the aging leaves
halfway downhill from midsummer.
 
And the short grass golden
like a cornfield in miniature;
the grey raindrops too small for gravity
to deform.  And the dead, shrouded, black-winged,
watching like All Hallows’ Day.  
 
Caw!  
The crow is the resurrection, not death:
the black spark dressed as eternal darkness.
Symbol in the flesh, unlike the sly snake,
slippery as the signifier, who
weaves of skin the coat of many colours,
the velour bathrobe for Lazarus. The dead
wear mist instead: GOD’s moving court of tears.


Necrowmancy by Gabriel Wainio-Théberge is a Blasted Tree original poem