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To The Prairie and To God
by Harold L. Gray
I shall go unto the prairie
I shall go there unto God,
For the mind is want with luxuries
And the prairies sweet with sod.
I’ll not mingle with the fairies,
But turn unto my God.
I’ll go unto the prairie from the moaning sea,
O’er a path so planned with care ---
O’er that path of stone I see
To the road of sunshine fair,
To the prairie yet to be ---
To the prairie and to God.
(c. Oct. 18, 1938)
Originally appears in the book , To the Prairie and to God... poetry written by Harold L. Gray (d. 1997) between 1936 - 1941, a collection discovered and compiled by his son, Kevin Gray, 2007.
► Learn More & Buy the Book
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KANSAS OMELET
by Bill Hickok
The drab diminutive cowbird
hops like a rabbit behind
her bovine friend.
Makes gourmet meals of
what’s left on the ground.
Her moxie does not stop there
In spring she drops her eggs
with mercenary zeal
into the nest of strangers.
Meadowlark becomes motherlark;
killdeer, mommy dear;
the prairie sparrows and grouse—
all oblivious surrogates
for these street-smart cruisers.
Gone the nursery and teenage
tyranny. These master sleuths
of the midland flats have
feathers of their kind and
brains that gleam
with the scent of a fox.
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Prairie Dogs Have No Time to Pray
by Dan Pohl
When they notice dangers that come
They dive into their Kansas seas
Filled with prehistoric, disconnected
Bones and ancient predator’s loosened
Teeth that punctuate their keeping
Among Indian Root, June bug grubs
And Devil’s Claw, which also burrow
To invade the space of shattered
Flint and Sand Hill grasses
They dig to swim there underground
Into bunkers where some live as we will not
Shaken, they squeak and leap centuries deep
When hawk shadows fly too near.
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WIZARDRY
for Dorothy Coulter Hall
by Gloria Vando
These people don’t know your voice
is the color of Venice at dusk.
No one has taught them to listen. Here
in this taco joint, while you sing an aria
to an old friend whose ruby-sequined
espadrilles reflect the shimmer
of your song, they joke and shout
commands for hot sauce and tequila.
When I comfort you, you shrug and say,
“I think I was given a voice so someday
when I’m old and dotty I can entertain
the folks in the nursing home.”
Somehow, it is fitting you should end up
in a Kansas townhouse over what
was once a farm, tornados raging back
and forth over the tomatoes and corn,
razing the living, raising the dead.
All passion in the land. Though never
did you dream your career would spin
itself out in the eye of silence.
Still, in this Kansas suburb your voice
radiates like a prairie fire,
the sounds vital, pure, consoling,
as they spread from Mozart to Oz to us.
Originally published in: Shadows & Supposes
2002, Arte Público Press, University of Houston
Read More Poems by ► Gloria Vando
--------------------------------- Today
by Chantel C. Guidry Today I adore
the wild Kansas wind—
the same one I complain of all winter—
more fierce than the ice
or the snow
all alone,
it strengthens the cold
and pierces layers of cloth,
to chill my tender frail skin.
But today—
today on the prairie
in the heart of the heat
of the most intense days of summer,
I’m glad for the wind,
the coolness of breeze
that rushes my room
and makes blanket on bed
a light and pink dancing dervish.
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World News, August 6th, 2006
by Laura Washburn
Drought covers the Kansas newspaper
with columns dull as dust. You
say: It’s Sunday—the birds need water,
and fill the bath. We are full.
Paying attention to the world,
our eyes droop. We are like mouth-
breathers in bad air, barely gasping enough.
We are like the croaker fish calling
their only song from melting drugstore ice.
Read More Poems by ► Laura Washburn
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Flint Hills, Kansas
by Primo Ventello Kansas surrounds you in immense, inescapable horizon.
Nowhere is this more striking, more serene, and beautiful
than in the Flint Hills. By day, carpets of undulating brome
and native prairie grass hiss softly in the breeze, seducing
the eye along the curvature of the Earth, broken only
by groves of hedge trees and sunlight glinting off flint rock.
Ring-neck pheasant spring up awkwardly into flight, showing
the oily auburn of their long tails, then quickly set a rhythm
as liquescent as a swimmer. By night, cicadas hum, coyotes cry,
and the sky is stippled with millions of stars, as if the hand
of their creator had shaken them from a great paintbrush.
Previously published in National Geographic Traveler
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Kansas Cottonwood
by Debra White
There’s something sacred about the way she’s dying
The old cottonwood in our backyard—dying in sections,
one limb at a time.
And now nearly half of her is dried, leafless,
bark peeling off leaving her naked skin
to be eaten by insects and pecked at by woodpeckers.
Yet it’s the death in her that keeps the rest of her living…
and giving
shade to us and refuge for squirrels and birds who want to hide.
But branch by branch, she’s letting go until one spring
She’ll decide to not wake up from hibernation.
Then, birds will weep
and so will I.
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End of winter reflections:
McPherson County Kansas
by Paula Luteran
The cool winds of March
cover the earth
like a soft fleece blanket
and beneath a powdery snow,
waits the crocus.
From the barn a soft padding
can be heard as the farmer's son
prepares the cows
for the morning milking.
With a farway look
the young boy reflects
on the advent of Easter
and the greening of the fields.
Spring brings with it
a burst of color.
The first witness to the season will be
the joyous crocus
on a slender stem.
With its bright ocre stamen
it presages the warmth of the sun.
Tiny purple blooms will dot
the neighboring farms
and soon,
there will be flowers:
tulips in all hues
and basketsful of daffodils.
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