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Raven dreams

raven%20on%20branch-small.jpg
Raven
Home Ranch
photo by Sharon O'Toole

I cast my clever raven gaze
about, sitting still except
to turn my head and look.
A scavenger life—it's not easy
to make a living every day.

Garbage is good—a feast
to fill the belly.
Easy peckings.
Dog food. It's a balanced diet
except they bark so
and run after me.
Ha! As if they could fly.

Eggs are the best.
Fat slow sage hens
flap up and try
to draw me away.
What do they think—
that I'm a coyote?

Songbirds try to hide
their tiny eggs
from my raven eye.
Ha! Only a snack,
quick but tasty.

Those newborn lambs—
now there's some bang for the buck,
Good luck for my beak.
I seek those napping babies
sated from the first suck
of mother's milk.
Land, hop, outsmart
those big white canines.
Coyote thinks he's clever
But he alarms the dogs,
not me. Ha!

Just a quick peck to the eye,
a stiletto to the brain
quick as a wink.
That woolly baby disemboweled
I spy with my raven eye—
dinner.

Trickster, indeed.
Caw! Caw!

Comments

Great piece, Sharon! Trickster, indeed.
I have some names.

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The opinions expressed in the Western Folklife Center's Deep West online journals are those of the online journal participants and not the Western Folklife Center. The Western Folklife Center does not moderate these journals and as such does not guarantee the veracity, reliability or completeness of any information provided in the journals or in any hyperlink appearing within them.

About Pat & Sharon O'Toole

Sharon O'Toole
Pat and Sharon O’Toole are ranchers in the Little Snake River Valley near Savery, Wyoming, right on the Colorado-Wyoming border. They raise cattle, sheep, horses, dogs and children. Pat “immigrated” from Florida in 1970. He attended Colorado State University, where he met Sharon when both worked for the campus newspaper. Sharon grew up on their ranch, where they live and work with her father, their daughter, son and granddaughter (soon to be grandchildren!). Pat is a “water buffalo” and has served in the Wyoming House of Representatives (1986-1992), on the President’s Western Water Policy Review Advisory Commission, and is the current President of the Family Farm Alliance, which advocates for farmers, ranchers and irrigators. Sharon is an author, poet and journalist. She writes extensively on Western issues and is a columnist for “The Shepherd” magazine. Pat and Sharon are the parents of three children: Meghan, 27; Bridget, 26; and Eamon, 20.
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