The prairies curve in glimmering textures now
Into the furrowed cumulus. Wide-harrowing shafts
Of sunset pierce the gold-disked night.

Tilled earth glistens in wet labial forms.
The deep rows spread, pulling the fields’ rims,
Incised with patterns of the plows.

On foundations of thick-mortared stone
Bank barns ride a swollen sun.
Capped silos cock the clouds.

Soft shapes of roundness stretch the mounded hills.
The moist ground parts to hold the pulsing light.
Rose dusk now clasps the quailed hedgerows.

Heavy ewes browse by the meadow’s stream.
Six kittens prance behind a farm cat’s stalk.
Winged winds of darkness stroke all gravid life.

Waters break.

Stones rest.

Seeds swell.

The tendoned newness in this freshened land
Connects in sheaths of vital intricacy
All things that time attenuates.

Refracted in the kitten’s eye,
The glow of Sirius
Streaks this evening sky.

In folds of flesh and earth,
In layered light and stone,
This landscape quickens in its lime and loam. (52)