Clear

Steel, sterling silver, handspun linen thread

My people, of course, know we live on borrowed time.

It is the land and the river. It is, of course, the wild, burning sun gleaming blind white in streaking waves across the grasses flattened ‘gainst the blackened earth beneath. The earth that is my homeland was ground ragged long ago before we saw it by the banks of all the rivers whose great names rule o’er our maps and all our stories and the lines that mar the paint of old brick houses on the oldest of our streets (no matter how humble they may be). When the rivers swell, when their waters grow angry and rip at the seams of our homes, when they grow calm and smooth and clear as they lay tender over fields of new-dead milo, corn, soy, feed, and up o’er the windows of the cars that couldn’t get out in time, we all know that in their grace they will leave us with black silt of such great richness that the city-fold had long ago settled here so far away to claim it. They learned their lessons quickly, and it was them that taught us. We are of the Riverfolk, strong backed in the great, wild smoothness of their deeps and shallows and stones and ugly brown clams and crawdads and pond-cows (bullfrogs, if you don’t know). We are as strong as our rivers, and we are just as beautiful.

With steel—the grey-smooth-black-blue-brown of our rivers themselves and the skies that are over us as well as the peerless strength of our hands and hearts—and with silver, and with handspun linen strick spun on a workhorse of a spinning wheel rescued from my homeland, well-loved and well-used before me, I work to honor and bear this place as a badge of pride. We all have earned it.