Dakota

I crested the rise and saw the hills splayed out across the plain before me, gloomy yet majestic. With the clouds above and the sun behind, they were blacker than I had ever seen before. Who would have thought that such beauty could arise from such - my thoughts probed for the right word - such plain-ness?

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A giant gash, a crooked fissure, a jagged hole in the earth ... a canyon painted in browns and reds and greens sinks below the striped highway streaking along the prairie. There is beauty in the heights. There is beauty in the depths, too. But this range is not my home.

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I lift my eyes to the hills, can these men help me? I see faces, but they do not smile. Their eyes do not see, nor their ears hear. Their mouths do not speak, so I cannot hear their voice. And I rush about, each day more quickly than the next, searching ... searching ... searching.

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I have walked through a barren wasteland, alternating between sunshine and shadow as I went up each mound and back down the other side. This is a bad place. I do not wish to remember it, yet I cannot forget. This land is silent and lonely, full of grief and sorrow and anger.

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Do not hold back your river of tears, my love. Do not shut them up like a dam that contains the mighty torrent. The fort you build for protection will become a prison in the end. Do you feel pain? Name it, as you would a child ... George, or Louis, or Randall. And then, like a child, let it go. There is power in the release.

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Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away!
For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.
The time of singing has come, and the voice of the dove is heard in our land.
Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away!