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This year autumn has come to Oklahoma in the most delightful way. Some years a freezing cold snap seems to paralyze the manufacturers of chlorophyll and leaves stay on the trees in an unattractive gray-green way. Not so this year. As the approaching winter sun shines brightly across the branches of maple, black jack or shrub oak, elm, persimmon, sumac an array of oranges, reds, yellows and burnt burgundies simply seem to
burst in upon our senses with a sudden presentation to defy us not to notice.
As I stood at the head of my brother’s grave to look out across the empty segment of prairie beside him and on to the sandbar of the winding Arkansas River my mind wandered and I could see his life before me.
“I’m sorry brother,” I spoke to him in my mind. “I fought those who held your life in their hands but they were too strong for me. I didn’t think they were as serious in their destructiveness as they were.”
The quiet of the place on the high hill was broken by the trill of a blackbird.
It’s call took me back to the rippling waters of Antelope Creek in Osage County where our family fished through the night and enjoyed our catch mother fried up in the black skillet resting on burning coals all while the Red Wing Blackbirds were our morning serenade.
“Rest my brother, descendant of Black Bird, brother to Standing Bear,” I spoke. Our Great Spirit has done as he promised. He has hidden you away in the grave and you are sleeping so not to see His anger as He remains true to His work.”