A Prairie Quilting  
by Stephen Meats

K-96 highway north and west of Fredonia climbs
and quickly crests a bluff, and stretching
away from this high point the smoking fields
of corn and wheat and oats and milo and soybeans,
and bluestem pastures, and ditches full of larkspur
and goldenrod and sunflowers and bindweed
form a pattern like a giant log-cabin quilt,
and the trucks and the cars traveling the roads
and the tractors trailing plumes of dust
above the fields seem shuttles weaving a fabric,
and the air is full of scissortails
and meadowlarks and swallows all weaving,
and the legs of killdeer running through the pastures
and of bobwhite scurrying into plum thickets
and of herons stalking frogs along Fall River
are like quick needles stitching,
and men on foot or horseback or behind plow mules
or in haymows or on combines or corn pickers
are stitching, and women with rifles
in the doors of dugouts and in the barns
milking or at their looms or laboring
over writing desks or cook stoves or sickbeds
are stitching, and men and women together,
man the needle and woman the cloth, in love,
or perhaps lust, or even force or hate or fear
are stitching, stitching, always on the edge
stitching together this patchwork of generations
and land, and the tension:  too tight
and the thread will snap or the fabric cut,
too loose and the seams won't hold.

--first published in Albatross (1990); reprinted in
Looking for the Pale Eagle (Woodley Press, 1993).

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by Amy Fleury

There is a physics to burnt toast and tenderness--
 a law proven in a kitchen south of a certain town.
Here she scrapes black crumbs in washboard rhythm
for the old man choked with bacon grease
and egg yolk who sits at her table.
Brush of silver whiskers, he leaves,
carrying his body like a sack of feed.
Baked bread and bleach claim this place
where she sits to husk and churn--
each day an adage.

In town, her girdle binds as she markets
for flour and spools of thread.
Weather talks barometric pressure,
rain gauge banter.
Straw purse clasped, she winds home
to the bud and shed, vine and prune.
He is there, driving
the John Deere in wide circles.
And sure as the moon will wax and wane,
the old man pats her bottom,
sits at her table as she ladles stew.
 

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Remembrance
by Duane L. Herrmann

It's just a label: "Farm Fresh Cider"
        a simple common title,
The local near, just down the road:
        "Douglas, Co." (Kansas).
Now soiled and aged and torn,
        just a bit of paper,
But for the name, the family name:
        "M. (Mathias) Gantz."

My grandmother's grandfather
        and his apple orchard,
My family, one hundred years ago,
        was here as I am now.

Whispers Shouting Glory, c 1989,
Duane L. Herrmann -- Buffalo Press, Topeka
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LAKE
by Daniel Spees

It was precisely in the center of summer

the time to escape in swimming. . .

            my girlfriend's cousin had a cabin

            up in Reading, right by a lake,

            so with blankets and towels

            in a cardboard box

we rode weekends to this shack on the shore

where there was a porch, cots and a kerosene

            lamp, all the clumsy necessaries

            distasteful to parents--

            an outhouse listing left,

            hammock between pines, cistern,

            matches, clothespins, sandals. . .

The loneliest lake in the county,

my girlfriend's fat cousin said

            among the lapping, whispering,

            chuckling noises of the insects,

            water and trees, and my girlfriend

            would laugh about it until dark. 

The loneliest lake maybe in Kansas,

she'd murmur in my ear beside me

            on the creaking canvas.  At ten o'clock

            the water went black except for splashes

            of moonlight.  Her thighs were like

            cool slick lotion on my sunburned hide,

like memory, like lake sounds interrupting

logic as I lecture my kids.

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Summer Night

    for William Stafford

by Steven Hind

On the road tonight with that

shovel of stars overhead, Milky

Blur I christen it, Bill, I

thought of you, traveling

the dark with the trucks and

the skunks.  Near Abilene

a pale stain passed under my

lights, apostrophe from some

deer meeting fate in a confusion

of headlights, and your poem

whispered its steady purr

over another recent killing.

At two,

past all disasters that did

not happen tonight, I squat

in a bath of breezes under

my cottonwood.  This to say:

thousands of leaves believe

in summer tonight, saying,

Be true.  You are.  Adios. 

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Remnants

by Rachel Johnson
 

An arrowhead, a grinding stone, a

Chip from a discarded jar, leather

Strips of a papoose lay strewn about the

Back pasture behind the farmhouse not far,

Leaves the curious without doubt of

Who traveled and survived

Before.

Grasses blanket the trail once worn

Ragged where dogs yet eaten then

Horses pulled poles laden with household

Wares and treasures and bounty to

Summer rendezvous along the river

Cottonwood and elm shaded for trade and

Talk.

The Smokey first washed then settled on

Deer and duck and down covered geese

Track scratches, beaver and weisel paw

Prints, and a hundred foot stomps left by

Moccasin from generations of drifters

Seeking camaraderie, company and

Contest.

Now hoof paths pounded hard by black

Heifers heavy with unborn calves

Finger their way past the dry creek

Bed to moss covered stock tanks,

Trailed dry cow chips splattered about

Parallel tire lines of an old pickup

Truck.

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