byJim Barnes
- You know how crow got black, don't you? Well, it was
like this. Once he was white, really white, and a master of birds
and men. You know, he felt sorry for the people. They got cold
in the winter. They had to eat raw fish. So crow decided to
discover fire. He went to the mountain where the thunder
lived. No fire. He went to the valley where the rainbow lived.
No fire. I'm stupid, he said. Why didn't I think of that before?
I'll go to the sun, he said. Oh, the people said, oh. I'm going,
he said. And he did. Then something terrible happened. The
sun must have got mad. The sky was filled with fire every-
where and burnt snowflakes drifted down. The people said, it's
a miracle, that black snow. They prayed to the sun. Then they
heard something. It was very weak. Caw, it said, caw. They
looked over behind a bush, which had begun to burn. They
were afraid. But it was only crow. He was very weak and very
black. It was some tough fight, he said, but I won.
From The Sawdust War. Copyright 1992 by Jim Barnes.
Used with the permission of the poet and the University of Illinois Press.Return to the Jim Barnes website