The Blackbird Says...

She walked down the path on what seemed like any other morning. Her tempo with a fearless skip, for she was the apple of her fathers eye and the china doll her mother dressed in tights, white gloves and lace. She first noticed the sounds in the remoteness of the silent break of day. She curved her head toward the cypress trees just making out a murder of large black birds throughout the mist. Like a great wind the shrill and flapping of wings encompassed her. Her school books dropped to the ground like stones. Shock gave way to panic as the raven took hold of her scalp, claws intertwined and matted in her curls as droplets of blood rolled down her cheeks. The raven shook her viciously and didn't release her for ten years.

Through a plight of exhaustion she spotted a garden just across the way with a green meadow and a strong Oak tree. She laid her head to rest in the cool grass feeling for the safety of the rich soil below. In the shade coveted by the Oak she fell asleep, there she lay in peaceful slumber for twenty years where she grew roots that knotted with the mighty Oak which seeded the Earth.

She dreamed and dreamed until one day, she awoke to the soft nuzzle of a dove. "I will make all your thoughts and ideas come true," said the beautiful white bird. "And all your dreaming while you slept will happen for you." He showed her images of what could be and offered her love and knowledge of the sea. The dove began to fly fading from her vision like a ghost dissolving to the clouds. Desperately she tried to follow pulling at the roots, breaking them to shard split wood. The meadow where she lay turned brittle as she collapsed to a thatch prickly and sharp. Watching the Oak wither and die a wave of misery came over her.

Through the pain that she created there she reached to her head to feel the mark of the raven, when a blackbird sat beside her. The blackbird smaller than the raven you see, says, in his most mocking tune, "How foolish is she?" "For it is a fool indeed who tries to escape her destiny."

Written for Imeem June 12, 2009