Raven Forrest

“For as much as I hate the cemetery, I’ve been grateful it’s here, too. I miss my wife. It’s easier to miss her at a cemetery, where she’s never been anything but dead, than to miss her in all the places where she was alive.”
― John Scalzi, Old Man's War

“Let me not mar that perfect dream
By an auroral stain,
But so adjust my daily night
That it will come again.”
― Emily Dickinson

“I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army.
Visiting Kathy's grave was the less dramatic of the two.”
― John Scalzi, Old Man's War

“The End of the Raven

"On a night quite unenchanting, when the rain was downward slanting
I awakened to the ranting of the man I catch mice for.
Tipsy and a bit unshaven, in a tone I found quite craven,
Poe was talking to a Raven perched above the chamber door.
'Raven's very tasty,' thought I, as I tiptoed o'er the floor.
'There is nothing I like more.'

[...]

Still the Raven never fluttered, standing stock-still as he uttered
In a voice that shrieked and sputtered, his two cents' worth -- 'Nevermore.'
While this dirge the birdbrain kept up, oh, so silently I crept up,
Then I crouched and quickly leapt up, pouncing on the feathered bore.
Soon he was a heap of plumage, and a little blood and gore --
Only this and not much more.”
― Henry N. Beard, Poetry for Cats: The Definitive Anthology of Distinguished Feline Verse