Corrupted vision
Paled past
These are things of a black wilted heart

Sorrow and shame are the things to blame
The coming night and the endless rain
The thunder and lightning never seem to end
Booming and crashing inside my head

The lights are gone, darkness is here
Coming again to whisper in my ear
Unrelenting and never forgetting
He'll come again when the sun is setting

The heartfelt cries of the black winged doves
Expressions of dead love roosting above
The shadows reach in and take control
Like sick poison ivy winding round my soul

I feel the death angel, his warm embrace
Lips so cold, but an oh so sweet taste
Eyes of ice and a touch of pain
A moment like this, never again

I feel so shattered, i'm torn apart
You're perfect for me
And my black wilted heart

Fairbanks -- When people call the Alaska Bird Observatory to report that they just saw a white raven, they have a hard time believing it themselves.

"They usually start out by saying, 'Tell me I just saw a white raven,' " said ABO executive director Nancy DeWitt. "I think people are pretty surprised to see one, and they should be."

Judging from several recent sightings around town, it appears the white raven that has been seen in Fairbanks the past three winters has returned for another winter of foraging. Sevin Bullwinkle saw the bird Sunday outside her house on Lathrop Street and snapped a picture to prove it.

"I just came out of the house, and it was sitting on the ground," said Bullwinkle, who lives a block from a trash bin. "I'm a fanatic about ravens, and seeing a white one was pretty exciting. I had never heard of one."

While there is no way to prove it is the same bird, white ravens are so rare that the chances of its being a different one are slim. In past years the bird was frequently seen in the vicinity of Goldhill Road and Sheep Creek Road on the western edge of Fairbanks, while this year it has been spotted in several spots around town. It has been seen almost exclusively during winter. The bird acts like any other raven, scavenging from trash bins around town and feasting on anything it can find to eat, from french-fries in parking lots to dead animals on the side of the road. Art Purdy saw what was almost surely the same bird as Bullwinkle a few weeks earlier in the parking lot of Arctic Bowl on Cowles Street, just a few blocks from Bullwinkle's house.

"It was eating out of a McDonald's bag," reported Purdy, who raced to his mother's house to get her so she could see it.

The raven is more of a cream or ashy gray color than it is white, said Dan Gibson, bird collections manager for the University of Alaska Museum on campus at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

"White is an exaggeration," said Gibson, who has seen the bird several times. But, he said, "next to a normal raven it's a strikingly different bird." The museum has just one white raven in its collection of more than 18,000 ravens collected from around the state. The lone bird was found in 1952 on Steele Creek Road in Fairbanks. The white raven in Fairbanks is not an albino but is referred to as a leucistic, which means it has less than normal pigmentation that results in a pale or washed-out appearance. Albino birds lack any kind of pigmentation and have red eyes.

Biologist John Wright at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Fairbanks said the bird first showed up in Fairbanks three years ago and has been seen in town every winter since. The agency gets several phone calls from white-raven observers each year, though the volume of calls isn't what it was when the bird first showed up.

"Most people who call in already know what it is," Wright said. Wright saw the raven fly over Creamer's Field just last week heading north with another raven. He described the bird as "dirty, dishwater gray."

"When you first see it, you don't think it's a raven, because being black is an important part of being a raven," Wright said. "Your first impression is that it's a strange-looking gyrfalcon. If you get to see it long enough, you figure it out."

Mark Ross, an avid bird watcher and education coordinator for Fish and Game, has seen the white raven three times.

"The first one I saw I thought was an adult goshawk," Ross said. "It was ashy gray like the underneath of a goshawk."

Wright has seen several photos of the white raven but none of the pictures have been very good, he said, in part because the bird blends in with its background, which is usually snow.

"I didn't have my good camera. I was so bummed," said Bullwinkle, who followed the bird in a pickup to get a better look at it. "I wish I had a better picture, because it would be hanging on the wall if I did."

Artist Sandy Jamieson attempted to get a photo of the rave