Raven on bob wire, softly keens,
as if trying and failing to sing.

Every thirty yards, a cobble cross
lies half-buried in sandy dirt, and

though I’m no Christian, I pray.
Black-billed magpies swoop

majesty from silver cottonwoods.
Big white cross waits at the end

of twelve stations.  I have no
answers on your recent diagnosis.

Nothing I’ve written will help.
Rust and brown kestrel keeps watch

from high branch and sky brightens,
light pouring down purple mountains.

No answers.  Practice saying that.

Kathryn Jordan is a music teacher and writer from Berkeley, CA. Her book, Riding Waves, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2018 and she is the 2016 winner of the San Miguel de Allende Writers Conference Prize for Poetry. Her poems appear in The New Ohio Review, The Comstock Review, Wraparound South, Birdland, Roar, Berkeley Public Library Poem in Your Pocket, and the anthology, Solamente en San Miguel, among others. “Blood Letting” is nominated for “Best of the Net,” 2019.