56. The Seventh Year

That’s how it started —

driving across Kansas on a wave of the blues,

poems working their way to the surface

bearing messages of stone and fern,

soul and bone and dirt.

The seventh year is the one when

everything changes — you’ve seen it coming

like a tornado on the horizon.

The sky turns black and yellow and green,

you run for the storm cellar

and play gin rummy on a rickety card table

next to the canned goods,

then sleep piled on the floor like puppies.

When birds carol the new day,

the sky like a basket of clean cotton towels,

nothing has changed but

everything is new.

— Olive Sullivan
Award-winning writer Olive L. Sullivan grew up in Pittsburg, Kansas. Since then, she has lived in cities, mountains, deserts, two foreign countries, and an island, but she returns to Kansas landscapes for the images in her work. She lives with two big dogs and travels every chance she gets.

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