Ghost Prairie Poem I

In 2002 after a trip to North Dakota I wrote a series of poems called Ghost Praire Poems. This is the title poem

GHOST PRAIRIE I

I speak plainly
poems your ears have forgotten to hear
words you don’t know
anymore, years like the static
roar of brown cicadas
drown them out

I felt your journeys
your heavy wagons rutting roads
ruddy faces looking up eyes bright
you sought my forever landscape
to save you, to bring life

I planted
and harvested your dreams
watched weariness and roaming
leaving
and coming home

I was generous
gave my glacier plains
and deep black soil
my opportunities
to you

I have seen my vastness shrink
horizons sink in the distance
fields pock marked by
towns prairie dogs built
and left to the crows

You must listen to me
before I am gone
my voice weakens
to soft whispers grown quiet
into the wheat that shifts in the wind