Where the Crawdads Sing

by Delia Owens

“Don’t go thinking poetry’s just for sissies. There’s mushy love poems, for sure, but there’s also funny ones, lots about nature, war even. Whole point of it—they make ya feel something.”

His dad had told him many times that the definition of a real man is one who cries without shame, reads poetry with his heart, feels opera in his soul, and does what’s necessary to defend a woman.

There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.’”

“Go as far as you can—way out yonder where the crawdads sing.”

Time speeds and bends around planets and suns, is different in the mountains than in the valleys, and is part of the same fabric as space, which curves and swells as does the sea.

Why should the injured, the still bleeding, bear the onus of forgiveness?

“Only you know How one side of a moment Is stretched by loneliness

We grew as one, Sharing souls.

You left this world, You died before the child. My friend, the Wild.

Faces change with life’s toll, but eyes remain a window to what was, and she could see him there.

Let’s face it, a lot of times love doesn’t work out. Yet even when it fails, it connects you to others and, in the end, that is all you have, the connections

You disappeared, I know not where. But your wing-marks still linger there. A broken heart cannot fly, But who decides the time to die?

“Never underrate the heart, Capable of deeds The mind cannot conceive.