Three leagues North as the raven flies, messenger of the gods. In barren white, the call sounds. One for sorrow, two for mirth. Three’s a wedding, four a birth. Ink on snow’s stark canvas, weightless as a shadow, black as night before we flooded the sky with blinding light, erasing stars.
Five for silver, six for gold. Seven a secret ne’er to be told.
Wise eyes of untold depths. Truths we shirk from in an ocean of knowledge whose surface we have only skimmed. The ancient ones saw a scarless Earth and marveled at its pureness.
Eight for Heaven.
The ravens lament what we’ve done.
Nine for Hell.
Silent sentries keeping watch from the naked boughs. They pass silent judgment.
Ten for the Devil’s own sel’.
*Reference to “Counting Crows” rhyme, The Folklore of Birds by Laura C. Martin © 1993
I'm an award-winning fantasy author, artist, and photographer from La Porte, Indiana. My poetry, short fiction, and memoir works have been featured in various anthologies and journals since 2005, and several of my poems are available in the Indiana Poetry Archives. The first three novels in my Chronicles of Avilésor: War of the Realms series have received awards from Literary Titan.
After some time working as a freelance writer, I was shocked by how many website articles are actually written by paid "ghost writers" but published under the byline of a different author. It was a jolt seeing my articles presented as if they were written by a high-profile CEO or an industry expert with decades of experience. I'll be honest; it felt slimy and dishonest. I had none of the credentials readers assumed the author of the article actually had. Ghost writing is a perfectly legal, astonishingly common practice, and now, AI has entered the playing field to further muddy the waters. It's hard to trust who (or what) actually wrote the content you'll read online these days.
That's not the case here at On The Cobblestone Road. I do not and never will pay a ghost writer, then slap my name on their work as if I'd written it. This website is 100% authentic. No outsourcing. No ghost writing. No AI-generated content. It's just me... as it should be.
If you would like to support my work, check out the Support The Creator page for more information. Thank you for finding my website! 🖤