Bonding With Place

I have been
treating the prairie
as a stranger for 30 years.
The plain is easy to ignore.

Now on my walks I discover
the deep grass song.
The old stalks gristle under my feet
and brush me with harsh branches
as I pass. I walk these broken
railroad trails and paths along
polluted ditches where the water
takes the cleanliness from the sky.

The yellow flowers and the blue
and the tall thorn bushes,
whose names I don't know, repeat
in tiny flower towns clustered tight.
Families hold back their neighbors.

The horizon sits at the edge of the
meadow and the blue sky is crinkly with cloud.
I am getting to know the grass
and decide the weeds
are tied to me by memory.

With aspen and blackbirds
I go where grasses
take back wha belongs to them.