Linda Gregg

The mind goes caw, caw, caw, caw, dark and fast. The orphan heart cries out, “Save me. Purchase me as the sun makes the fruit ripe. I am one with them and cannot feed on winter dawns.” The black birds are wrangling in the fields and have no kindness, all sinew and stick bones. Both male and female. Their eyes are careless of cold and rain, of both day and night. They love nothing and are murderous with each other. All things of the world are bowing or being taken away. Only a few calves will be chosen, the rest sold for meat. The sound of the wind grows bigger than the tree it’s in, lessens only to increase.Haw, haw the crows call, awake or asleep, in white, in black.

The young men ride their horses fast on the wet sand of Parangtritis. Back and forth, with the water sliding up to them and away. This is the sea where the goddess lives, angry, her lover taken away. Don’t wear red, don’t wear green here, the people say. Do not swim in the sea. Give her an offering. I give a coconut to protect the man I love. The water pushes it back. I wade out and throw it farther. “The goddess does not accept your gift,” an old woman says. I say perhaps she likes me and we are playing a game. The old woman is silent, the horses wear blinders of cloth, the young men exalt in their bodies, not seeing right or left, pretending to be brave. Sliding on and off their beautiful horses on the wet beach at Parangtritis.