One whisper to Huginn and I fly 
on his wings above ancestral fjords. 
One kiss on Muninn’s feathered skull 
and I see the glacial landscape 
my grandest farmor gazed upon 
beside the fire of her cabin 
as she cradled her son 
and beseeched the birds 
for her husband’s fate. 

My red, white, and blue: 
blood, snow, and sea. 

Cousin crows caw in my own backyard: 
diminutive wild echoes of the god-ravens 
that peck my cheeks while I sleep. 
Odin’s birds blood their beaks 
with my dormant Viking valor 
and rub the red liquid 
on my closed eyes, to stir visions 
of a people I can no longer know, 
of a history older than the cross, 
of gods that once thrived in daily lives 
but now wait, battle-sore and sleeping, 
(as I do) for Ragnarök. 
As long as I live, they shall never die. 

I am descended from their avarice. 
I am descended from their surrender. 
I am the axe and the apple. 
I am the battle and the harvest. 
I am their darkness 
(of dragon-prow’d ships). 
I am their light 
(of Sunna rising over broken ice).