Redbuds
By Greg Hack
Redbuds in the wild
Grasses copper, straw and green
Spring’s Flint Hills glory
Kansas August Evening
by Jamie Lynn Heller
Open my
window, Mommy
she said
I want to
hear the
cicada
lullaby
Up to
my shoulders
In
Indian Grass,
I
find that I, too, have taken root
In
this prairie,
Sent
shoots feeling their way
Past
granules and pebbles
Into
blackness,
Into
resistance,
Into
the iron-hard turf.
Now
the wind can send me swaying wildly,
The
sun can dry and crack my skin,
But,
like the prairie grass,
I am
anchored,
I am
here to stay;
No
pulling, no tugging
Can
wrest me from this land.
Like
the Indian Grass, I cling to this earth,
Every
bit as urgently,
Every
bit as exuberantly,
As I
reach for the sky.
Going Home
(Oct. 2005)
by Ronda Miller
Grave sites scatter
either side of the dusty
gravel road like
a child's long forgotten marbles.
Many years ago
bitter, blinding tears
watered these sites daily,
caregiver to grass, trees,
headstones.
Present Memorial Days
produce less tears,
a hasty pulling of weeds.
A different life
acknowledges time
passing much too quickly,
not unlike the tumble weed
blown across the steady
incline of I-70.
The foot that pressed
lightly, nimbly
on the gas pedal
all the way west
as close to the Colorado
and Nebraska borders
as you can get,
now presses slowly,
age and pain taking their toll.
Silent tears fall
as the car heads in the other direction.
Going east now through
waving, russet colored wheat fields.
Leaving the high plains and heading for Lawrence,
remaining burial sites
too soon calling my name,
filling again with familiar faces
of people I love.
Guy
by
Kevin Heaton
To
Kansas for harvest from up in Moline.
Met a
young girl, her dad owned the place.
Not
long thereafter they wound up together.
Worked hard all their lives in the hardest of days.
Grandpa was wee, but lord, oh so mighty.
Profoundly moral but never in church.
Faith
in the remedies not in the doctors.
Rolled all his own from a Prince Albert can.
You
grab an instrument grandpa could play it.
Played the barn dances way back in the day.
"Civil War Ditties" on an old barn dance fiddle.
Work
boots a tappin' a tune on the floor.
When
I was just four they were still on the farm.
We'd
go to visit, a big thrill for me.
I
helped churn the butter and gather the eggs,
then
up on the mare and away we would go.
The
thumb he used most was eternally swollen
by a
Chincapin burr many long years before.
Got a
bum shoulder at a shelter belt picnic.
When
he cleared his nose, best not be nearby.
That
thumb on a horseshoe was Mozart to music.
Way
up in the air that horseshoe did soar,
then
down on the peg without ever slidin'.
He'd
let me win quarters then win them all back.
There
are those who might say grandpa was calloused,
but
in the depression you got tough or died.
Mom
always said they were poor without knowing,
always had love, food, and something to wear.
On a
big-dialed Philco he listened to baseball.
When
I hid his cap, he called me a scamp.
Had a
stroke near the end while tuned to a ballgame.
Wouldn't go to the doctor,
we
carried him there.
Break-up
of my Landscape
by Chandra E.A. Dickson
On a sudden awkward drive
away from Wichita to Boulder, you point out that I am
Midwestern; a Kansas landscape puzzle without the pieces in the
middle that form the interesting part of the picture: the center
of the bison’s eye, the wildflowers whose names I do not know,
the rocky tips of the Flint Hills. I worry about the longest
drought in twenty years, the out-of-control grass fires that
crept across the state line from Oklahoma, spreading across the
fields into Harvey, Burton …
How the plains of my life
would look charred black—
How one grain of wheat feels
in my hand and the strength it takes to hike Mt. Sunflower at
dawn; to look out and see the crest of the Rockies and know that
was as far west as we’d go. Understanding this landscape as
home.
All poetry on this page
Copyright © by their authors - 2009,
2011
-------------------------------------
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Love Letters from Kansas to
Oz: Poems about a Poet
7
by DaMaris B. Hill
you
some, thing's
angel
the home in
each of my poems
rumors
blister
like pinchy
rosaries
heaven is not
above
but closer
reclining in
the rim of your smile
i am a
witness
never blinked
when i looked
away
i want to sip
light
give me music
of your veins
the electric
lasso of your gaze
tugging after
laughter
with your
fingers
knead me
Love Letter to Kansas
by Pamela McMaster Yenser
I have always
wanted to recite love
letters
written clear as the unfettered
Salmon of the
West on the sandy-shored
Snake or the
swift and shadowy St. Joe—
so unlike
those thick rivers of our youth
that muddied
the gowns of baptismal whites
and darkened
the slick canoes lovers rent
for love’s
languishments.
Our brown
bodies
listened too,
to love’s insistent tune,
strung high
up as the songs cicadas
hum in dreams
left hanging on the bark
of river
cottonwoods, their insides emptied
out by ants
and blown through yards and yards
of backyard
laundry lines, barbed wire claws
hooked on
bright underwear, mostly mine
as I recall,
more elegant than yours, more light.
It’s summer
now and now I’m thinking
all the time
along riverlines, how
the fragrant
brown riverbath of the past
eddies out of
the deep ecstatic blue
pool that
draws my lightening fly line—
now a whip,
now an S on paperwhite sky,
now passing (psst-psst)
downstream as I am
one with the
fly in her fuzzy coat,
lustrous—that
is, until we two are snagged.
I know this
is not what is meant by
catch and
release, but look how I’ve tried:
to channel my
rivers of fear,
to thread
hope through the smallest eye,
to tie the
knots that will not come untied.
I want to get
this right, to extend my hand
just so far,
to cast myself upstream.
If your fish
aren’t biting, I tell myself,
it must love
itself I’m fighting, that you yourself
must be
released, like letters let go. But wait,
I think,
isn’t that only halfway true—
the way home
is like a river running through
the great
dead sea of childhood. The way
I want you.
The way I turn you loose.
Originally Published in Touchstone (September 2003)
Kansas Rides
by Jamie Lynn Heller
I gripped the
under curve of metal
lining the
bed of his farm battered truck
to keep from
getting
tossed out
and lost in
the prairie sea.
The hot wind
in my hair
carried the
breath of the land in bloom and
hours later
in bed my pillow would
absorbed the
scent
to keep me
company.
I could see
the bald curve of his head
through the
back window,
the tip of a
toothpick pricked his silhouette,
one hand on
the wheel,
his left arm,
from shirt sleeve to watch band,
a long time
partner of the sun’s.
It didn’t
matter where he went
or what chore
waited,
I went along
and
rode the
fields.
September 24th,
Overland Park, KS
by Shawn Pavey
Outside my
office tower
a couple
times a day,
I stand under
the sky in the world
and smoke.
Today, the
air is cool
as leaves on
trees adjust
to the newly
arrived season.
Maples
redden,
cottonwoods
gild,
dressed
splendid
for a short
trip on wind
and then, to
rest
on grass and
dirt.
Cigarette
smoke rises on breeze,
leaves slip
to the air and fall
as soft
light, autumn stained,
warms my
shirt before I ascend
to climate
control,
a cluttered
desk,
computer,
cold coffee,
and
telephone.
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