One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

by Olivia Hawker

The seasons don’t cease to change because we haven’t the time to plant or tend or harvest, because grief like a hailstorm comes up sudden and frightens us with its noise. Once the storm rolls on, the fields remain, and life goes on, whatever we prefer.

There was no tension between us. Like the river and its bank, we flowed as one.

Death comes when it comes. You can’t do a thing to change it, once the great and final decision has been made.

What strength of character she has, that life hasn’t broken her, and hasn’t made her harder than she is.

“Such losses are a wound not even time may heal,”

And the bond that united them now—of shared hardships overcome—held them more tightly together than mere friends.

She was the prairie, and the prairie was his home.

I guess moonlight on water can’t be no prettier than moonlight on your hair, though.

When he kissed me, all the frogs on the riverbank began to sing.

Beulah was part of this land, just as the land was part of her—intrinsic, inseparable.

A tree may fall, but if even one root remains in the soil, it will live.

And then I looked at Clyde, who was looking steadily back at me, unblinking, and I thought, You’ll still be part of me, too. There’s no separating us now, no matter what tomorrow brings. My roots are forever in your soil.

Let joy run out of me. Let it soak the barren ground of this house—my home—and let something new and bright grow up from the field of my past bitterness.