Prairie (Excerpts)

The frost loosens corn husks.

The Sun, the rain, the wind

loosen corn husks.

The men and women are helpers.

They are all cornhuskers together.

I see them late in the western evening

in a smoke-red dust.

*　*　*　*

O prairie mother, I am one of your boys.

I have loved the prairie as a man with a heart shot full of pain over love.

Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water.

*　*　*　*

I speak of new cities and new people.

I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.

I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down,

a sun dropped in the west.

I tell you there is nothing in the world

only an ocean of to-morrows,

a sky of to-morrows.

I am a brother of the cornhuskers who say

at sundown:

To-morrow is a day.