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E View 
  • End of Winter Reflections... -- Luteran, Paula
F View    
  • Farming, Death... -- Kinney-Riordan, Susan
  • Flint Hills -- Elisabeth Birky
  • Flint Hills -- Karnowski, William J.
  • Flint Hills, Kansas -- Ventello, Primo
G View   
  • Gift -- Walkder -- Lois, Virginia
  • Going Home -- Miller, Ronda
  • Guy -- Heaton, Kevin
H View
  • Hawk Music -- Crabtree, Maril
  • Happy Thirteenth Birthday -- Meek, Martha Adams
  • Heavenly Gift -- Kopp, Nancy Julien
  • Home -- Cerio, Karen 
  • Houses Past -- Goldman, Paul

E

End of Winter Reflections: McPherson County KS
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 faraway 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 baskets full of daffodils.

F

Farming, Death & Taxes
by Susan Kinney-Riordan

I scan the horizon.
The outline of grain elevators against the sky
look like gravestones.
Horizon and sky touchstones
For life lived on the prairie.
 
Traveling the highways
I watch and look.
Dry fields and soybean harvest.
Favorable weather
it says on the USDA paperwork.
 
Farming in Kansas a gamble
worthy of Las Vegas.
My father-in-law said,
“The only sure things
about farming in Kansas
is death and taxes.”
Flint Hills
 by William J. Karnowski
 
outside of me is dawn
at first the birds celebrate
singing their stanzas
blue birds after blue birds
rain crows make their predictions
the prairie chicken boom
from the arena of the lek
and the mocking bird lies
about his identity
then all goes quiet
at the intermission
the second verse is the muffled
roar of the six-legged multitudes
honey bees massage the petals
satisfying that single sweet tooth
the yellow jackets menace
an innocent butterfly passerby
the grasshoppers chew tobacco
helicopter flies proudly hover
but the middle of the morning
belongs to the meadowlark
singing, "who the hell are you?"
asking, "who the hell are you?"
and I have no Christian answer.

Read More Poems by ► William J. Karnowski
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
 
Flint Hills
by Elisabeth Birky

 
Sun-drenched palette
Rolling hills
Extend
Beyond a cloudless horizon
Like a giant quilt.
 
An artist’s motif
Colorful wildflowers
Nod
Waving gently to the baton
Of the perpetual breeze.
 
Rich and varied grasses
Of every shade and hue
Beckon
As with open palms
To these majestic flint hills.

G

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.
Gift
     Topeka, Kansas
by Lois Virginia Walker
​

1948
Flatlands gave me a gift.
I’d like to say what it was
Not to have been born near water
Where salt solution spreads on sand;
Not to have been rocked in a cradle
Of mountains or put on top of a view;
Not to have been lost in the forest
With Hansel and Gretel, holding hands.
            I was pushed by the wind,
            On my feet pushing back
            I was small in the wind
            That would keep coming back.
Say the flat horizon of a child’s
Sketch leaves more to wind and sky,
Stretches out for every tree
And tulip added. . .offered up
To unsalted, never cornered air.

H

Hawk Music
by Maril Crabtree
 
Feathers spread into fingers,
hawk falls with the wind,
spiraling down as if caught
in a place of no hope –
 
a daredevil’s pitch, do-or-die.
 
Now hawk lifts again, drifting
where hope and wind
take him, whistling,
into the strumming air, filled
 
with a cloudless lullaby.
 
Listen as symphony’s
sweeping sounds pour unbound
from his flapping wings,
singing and swinging
 
across an arpeggio sky.
 
Houses Past
by Paul Goldman ©
 

At first glance the old farmhouse
appeared like a forgotten lean-to;
left to experience her own slow death--
accelerated now by the spring rite of restrained
burning of the prairie tallgrass.
 
This was not some sod-house sally,
rather a grand dame used to both
soirees and perils.  She was equal
to the task of either one.
 
Though her Flint Hills bones creaked
in the constant wind, she had survived
these past one-hundred and fifty years
on more than sheer grit.
 
Spirit rose within the wooden fibers
of her being.  Ask any rancher around
these parts about the sound beneath
the crackle of fire and whisper of wind.
 
He will be happy to share with you more
than you may want to know— of houses
past and Spirit present.
A Heavenly Gift
by Nancy Julien Kopp
 
One calm and peaceful day
the hand of God
passed over the land
we know as Kansas,
this place where the
hills meet the plains,
where sweet prairie grasses
bend and sway
like ballerinas amidst
soft and gentle breezes,
then dance wildly
when furious winds blow.
 
The Lord God pulled the vast
skies close to the ground, like
a soft coverlet of blue.
He gave us air to breathe
so clear the stars can do
no less than shine in
glorious reply
through velvet nights.
 
Over these hills and
across these plains,
the Creator scattered
many-hued wildflowers
and treasured trees in
all the right places.
His mighty hand
carved brooks and
streams alike.
 
With grateful heart
my prayer of thanks
soars Heavenward from
this very special place
that I call home.
Home
by Karen Cerio

 
Flat lands, oceans of wheat,
harvest hands, fields all neat
friendly folks, warm smiles,
country jokes, at home style,
family fun, 4th of July,
summer sun, stars in the sky,
county fair, carnival lights,
first place mare, dances at night,
drive-in features, friends for life,
old teachers, help in strife,
tornado warnings, siren blasts,
Sunday morning, faith that lasts,
skies of blue, thunder clouds,
grass with dew, funeral shrouds,
simple food, gathering eggs,
city dudes, bowed legs,
hand shake deals, respect of man,
prayerful kneels, God and land,
parents and home, love and laughter,
thoughts roam, forever after
to Kansas.
 
1987 kc
 
Originally Published in Life's Dusty Roads, © 2012 by Karen Cerio, all rights reserved Tate Publishing & Enterprises, LLC -- Purchase this book online at Amazon.com
​Happy Thirteenth Birthday!
by Martha Adams Meek ©
 
You've jackknives in your pockets
And guns upon your wall,
You've bows and arrows on the shelf;
Man!  You're walking TALL.
 
The Kansas skies gleam in your eyes,
You rope a horse right well,
You're growing up to be a man
And Dad's so proud to tell...
 
"Yeah, Sam shot the deer he saw
As it bolted from the brush;
And when it hit the ground, I swear,
My knees were weak as mush!"
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  • Home
    • Site Map
  • Kansas Poets
    • Kansas Poet Laureates >
      • 8 - Traci Brimhall
      • 7 - Huascar Medina
      • 6 - Kevin Rabas
      • 5 - Eric McHenry
      • 4 - Wyatt Townley
      • 3 - C. Mirriam-Goldberg
      • 2 - Denise Low
      • 1 - Jonathan Holden
    • Notable Kansas Poets
    • Ad Astra Project
    • Shoptalk >
      • A. Flurey - Shoptalk
      • G. German - Shoptalk
      • S. Hind - Shoptalk
      • D. Low - Shoptalk
      • S. Meats - Shoptalk
  • Kansas Poems
    • Kansas Poems
    • KS Poems - A, B, C, D
    • KS Poems - E, F, G, H
    • KS Poems - I, J, K, L
    • KS Poems - M, N, O, P, Q
    • KS Poems - R, S, T, U, V
    • KS Poems - W, X, Y, Z
  • Writing Poetry
    • Getting Started
    • Poetry Lesson Plans
  • Links and Groups