Prairie Schooner

One is for sorrow, two for mirth, three's a wedding, four's a birth.I see one crow flying over the car as my brother drivesus along the California coast;we stop in Occidental, the roads switching through redwoods,now past niche vineyards with names like Poplar SuiteNo. 5 and across the Russian River, then the oceanpealing dome-split-blued and horizon-tuckedlike a mantra in the mouth. We park at Goat's Head and walk downto the waves sucking sand down to grit, past touristsin windbreakers, a girl wearing a tutuover leggings, her hair curled around a wristof wind. I stuff my pockets with seashells, pools of whorl,remembrances I do not need. We don't stay longenough, maybe that's how I knew it would be so I tookall those shells. Later, I'd wash them in the sinkand set them, dried, on the white bedspread.My brother had told me—as the Pacific curved its wateron our right, my palm on the leather armrest—the differencebetween a crow and a raven is their size,but also the color and shape of their beaks,a raven's is strong like stone and sharp enough to tearfur from meat. But both wear their feathers black and mirrored,I think, and when walking across snow look like menwho have lost their briefcasesor like punctuation marks wandering on a blank white pagelost between words-no-worlds, just lost, pocket squaresof blood in their hearts, tender hearts, and when [End Page 160] they sleep do they shut only one black eye? Five is for heaven,six is for hell, the tale ends with seven, but I thinksix is enough. I let them dream with one eye open.

I watch what must be a beech tree outside the windowof my Airbnb, a shattering of green and one thin pane;I've used so many borrowed utensils todayfork, spoon, a dull ceramic knife to cutavocado and onion, an over-cooked sweet potato

in a convection oven. I am only miles awayfrom where I once climbed up on the roof of our old housestorm system visible across the milesflat roads that looked as if they could end at oceanbut there was only more desert, more dust, the tar shingles

knocking above us until I laid that ladder to the rain gutterand climbed up with a hammer in my hand as if I couldknock on the ceiling of sky, against God's eyeand find myself without him, without a husband,alone at last wrapped in blue. I carried three nails

between my lips, tense, and with purposealways a nail begging to be put still into a coffinof wood, to make its slow spark of metal rent togetherthe pieces of lives, as marriage does, the very worda screw and a drill. Do you think it strange that it was I

who rose above our home that night, crawled acrossto loosening shingles and one by one took the wet nailsfrom my mouth? I must admit it was a rush, all that wind, [End Page 161] and I believed I could see straight to Lubbock, Texas,or was it Amarillo, yellow star or rose of the panhandle?

Strange how when I turned my face up I forgot aboutthe distance, so captivated by open sky like an afterthought,like every wife spent evenings on rooftops hammeredby wind, nailing her life down thinking to let it fly awayinto some new pasture so raw and green it's almost blue. [End Page 162]