It was the year
The crows and the locusts came
The fields drained dry the rain
The fields are bleeding
"Daddy don't cry, it'll be alright"
She puts some water on the wound
And hums a little tune
While her courage puddles on the ground
Pooling, pooling
See the murder and the swarm descend
And the night is getting thick
The moon telling her tricks
She'd betray her every time
It was the year
The crows and the locusts came
The fields drained dry the rain
The fields are bleeding
It was the age
The foxes came for the fields
We were bleeding as we bowed to kneel
And prayed for mercy, prayed for mercy...
The crows and the locusts came
The fields drained dry the rain
The fields are bleeding
"Daddy don't cry, it'll be alright"
She puts some water on the wound
And hums a little tune
While her courage puddles on the ground
Pooling, pooling
See the murder and the swarm descend
And the night is getting thick
The moon telling her tricks
She'd betray her every time
It was the year
The crows and the locusts came
The fields drained dry the rain
The fields are bleeding
It was the age
The foxes came for the fields
We were bleeding as we bowed to kneel
And prayed for mercy, prayed for mercy...
~ Brooke Fraser, "Crows & Locusts"
I went to the cemetery today. Rain trendled down like sorrow over movement. Puddles gathered wet and soiled, steaming in cracks. Grass green but empty, season void. Birthday balloon flunked and dripping, heavy over floral. Flag limping, a dangle in the dew.
My umbrella held over her stone, a shield of me. Heavy with heart. Motion of thought.
"The year the crows and the locusts came..." It's the eating away, the gnawing at every edge of leaf, the famine of heart, the brunt of relationships. The dirt of me, dusty of hurt and pain and grief and betrayal. The "bleeding [knees] bowed to kneel, prayed for mercy..."
It's April 2009 - May 2010. "The year the crows and the locusts came..."
Geraniums faded pink mushed with white buds in bronze vase. One single, petaled rose, planted and blooming with size. I mark the words on stone: Forever A Living Example and look around.
Buds speckle the landscape. Reds, hues of blue, perching yellows and organic greens. Vases overwhelm and flow bright with life and color. Memorial flags and honors positioned.
Life.
Life in the cemetery. It grows.
It grows in pigments of daffodils and peonies and daisies and day lilies too. It grows in raised flags, wind whipped and fighting in breeze. It grows in stories and faces and generations living, past the lives there once brilliantly lived.
I went to the cemetery today. I hung back, washed by water, remembering the same, that Day.
I burrowed inside, remarking the mourning of the year the crows and the locusts came.
I rejoiced. At flowers spurning upward. At growth inside of me. At freedom of forgiveness. At release in the depth of me. At a live well-lived, blessing abundantly, marked by years.
"It was the year the crows and the locusts came..." It ate away at all I had, I knew, I was.
Yet now I see outside the grave - the flowers, the petals, the trees. The garden of hope, a world anew, and a blessing of good to me.
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