Prairie
Wind sweeps across this picture Meadowlark on barbed wire, yellow breasted door opens with its song Weathered fenceposts hold the wire Below the ground they slowly rot Wind almost everyplace in this picture Shirts on the clothes line, their sleeves ripple The rattlesnake suns her long body on the scoria outcropping, her skin flutters above her like worn flags Magpie flickers through choke cherry bushes at the edge of the creek The black fruit sweetens in the long light Beneath the wind Do not forget the badger, who digs alone into the sod and the silence While high above, wind carries the Rough-legged hawk on her long hunt Over wheat fields that move in waves across the field, each stalk tossing its head like water And as far as eye can see, the shadow of anything standing ripens twice each day |