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I - L ... Kansas Poems
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I too am Kansas
(Inspired by Langston Hughes’ I Too Sing America ) by Saundra Harris I am in the shadows waiting for her glance. My eyes bright like Langston’s Wondering as I wander whispering for her I am the voice of many singing to the stars through difficulties I am the honey hands of Gordon’s mother Returning him home to rest Mother land of Barack I stand in defiance to wrongs. I am the dark clouds brewing in the east carrying the tears I carry her flag – proud but troubled I remember the fear the rejection still I am the Buffalo Soldier returning from II I am the eyes of Linda Brown tiny in Topeka Walking to school I am her native Son born of her cities My legs run in her green grass with Maurice faster Than any man I stand in the shadows waiting for her glance. I am the endless night skies of the plains. One day she will see me and say how beautiful I am And be ashamed I too sing Kansas |
In Kansas To Stay
by Roy J. Beckemeyer 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. |
In Passing
by Lee Mick
Just East of the Miltonvale turn off
Nestled between a narrow strip of old highway 24
And the smooth, gray ribbon of the new two-lane,
Lies a little, well manicured patch
Of native Kansas grass.
Positioned one above the other,
Two small, white gravestones.
Their identical appearance
Suggesting a past sharing of the two lives.
A oneness of…
Time? Affiliation? Family?
I stopped only once amongst my hurried passings,
To try and answer the questions that overcome me
Each time the two come into view.
But with the darkening evening hour
The detail that had worn soft upon the little, white, stone faces
Escaped the straining of my tired eyes.
Eventually I will set aside the time
To try again... to discover
Truth behind the stones.
Until then I will be content
To smile
Upon the mind’s manifestation…
Two small prairie daughters
Of identical blonde curls and white cotton dresses,
Who pause their endless game of tag
To wave with delight
As I pass by
In constant self-serving haste
by Lee Mick
Just East of the Miltonvale turn off
Nestled between a narrow strip of old highway 24
And the smooth, gray ribbon of the new two-lane,
Lies a little, well manicured patch
Of native Kansas grass.
Positioned one above the other,
Two small, white gravestones.
Their identical appearance
Suggesting a past sharing of the two lives.
A oneness of…
Time? Affiliation? Family?
I stopped only once amongst my hurried passings,
To try and answer the questions that overcome me
Each time the two come into view.
But with the darkening evening hour
The detail that had worn soft upon the little, white, stone faces
Escaped the straining of my tired eyes.
Eventually I will set aside the time
To try again... to discover
Truth behind the stones.
Until then I will be content
To smile
Upon the mind’s manifestation…
Two small prairie daughters
Of identical blonde curls and white cotton dresses,
Who pause their endless game of tag
To wave with delight
As I pass by
In constant self-serving haste
K
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Kansas Coastline
by Amber Clontz For me there is no ocean. Sea shells are remains of Box turtles Cottonwood leaves are my plankton The whales I know are called buffalo Cicadas imitate the tide’s heaving roar Mermaids plow dust beaches Land locked prairies reminisce, the day the sea drained and sunflowers grew. 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. Kansas August Evening
by Jamie Lynn Heller Open my window, Mommy she said I want to hear the cicada lullaby |
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. Kansas in Autumn
by Barbara Mayer Cerulean skies surround the Kansas plains like an azure ocean sweeping across the horizon. Faint wisps of white marble the aqua expanse. Shafts of sunlight bathe shriveled cornstalks and withered sunflowers, creating an autumn landscape resplendent with rusts, ambers and olive greens. The flat contour of Kansas may lack the boldness of mountain peaks and majesty of ancient oaks, but when its fertile fields touch the cobalt firmament, serenity envelops my soul and I feel touched by grace. |
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Keep It Safe
by Dan Pohl All Ad Astra folk should Share, of course, what they Know of sleepy small towns Hidden in state, cut away from the Arteries of blacktop highways And tell about red-dirt streets That spill into Kansas farmlands, Un-choked prairies, filled with Wind moved milkweed Trilling Meadowlarks, and Lip numbing Snake Root. From tractors, we see them Handicapped, out-of-state Travelers who stop and stand And stare into the open plains As into a crystal ball to divine The mystic secrets of the place For a moment, they attempt To look for that which we Have eaten over years Absorbed by willing skin They pressure the moment with little time To stay, overnight maybe, and they feel they Must rush to the other side, to what They think is a better state, the next Diversion, so they squint hard for the Answer, hard enough to stamp lines Onto the outside corners of their eyes |
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. Kansas Flint Hills
by Russett Stubbs Winters, dark and lonely. Springs, burnt blacken grass. Summers, lush and green. Falls, rust and brass. Horizons, miniature mountains. Sunrise, Sunsets, bold storms. Lovely, Kansas Flint Hills. Wondrous, yearly norm. |
Kansas Wild Flowers
(how I met my wife)
by James Blackmon
Looking across this Kansas field
covered with full-bloom-flowers
on a hot humid day
I wonder...
is she real--this woman
in the distance?
Her beauty--
more wonderful
than all the wildflowers between us--
puts me in doubt.
Her stillness...
as solid as an anchored-ship
on calm waters.
She does not pluck flowers from their stems--
no,
she just stands there
facing me...
piercing the thick, humid, fragrance of this field
with her look.
(how I met my wife)
by James Blackmon
Looking across this Kansas field
covered with full-bloom-flowers
on a hot humid day
I wonder...
is she real--this woman
in the distance?
Her beauty--
more wonderful
than all the wildflowers between us--
puts me in doubt.
Her stillness...
as solid as an anchored-ship
on calm waters.
She does not pluck flowers from their stems--
no,
she just stands there
facing me...
piercing the thick, humid, fragrance of this field
with her look.
Kansas
by Rushton Prince
Have you seen in rolling nimbus cross the plains
or looked heavenward as dark sky is fractured
by gesticulating light? Have you felt the blast of the Rockies 800 miles east
or the thunderous pound on your chest from sky creased?
Have you heard the horns of the Calvary
or the songs of the Arapaho, Comanche, Kansa, Kiowa, Osage and Pawnee
on the prairie breeze? Have you found yourself under the watchful eye of a Jayhawk
or chased by Wild Cats and Wheat Shocks?
Have you received a warm wave from a stranger on a back road
or an elder in a chair on a white paint flecked porch? Have you seen sunflowers forever
or a farmer’s arm over his boy’s shoulder
at sunset walking home for dinner?
Have you seen the wood people adorning Wichita
or felt the ancestor's presence at a Powwow? Have you seen the sky boil, rotate
suddenly descend in fury; beautiful, captivating, foreboding, destructive
and sparing in twisting motion?
Have you experienced the hospitality of the people of Howard
or felt the birth pains of the Civil War in Lawrence and her sister
Pottawatomie? Have you heard the Wagon Masters “Hoa!”
on an autumn day in Morse, where the Santa Fe and California trails cross?
These surface on waves to ride crests of the prairie sea
coaxed by the undercurrents of Kansas.
by Rushton Prince
Have you seen in rolling nimbus cross the plains
or looked heavenward as dark sky is fractured
by gesticulating light? Have you felt the blast of the Rockies 800 miles east
or the thunderous pound on your chest from sky creased?
Have you heard the horns of the Calvary
or the songs of the Arapaho, Comanche, Kansa, Kiowa, Osage and Pawnee
on the prairie breeze? Have you found yourself under the watchful eye of a Jayhawk
or chased by Wild Cats and Wheat Shocks?
Have you received a warm wave from a stranger on a back road
or an elder in a chair on a white paint flecked porch? Have you seen sunflowers forever
or a farmer’s arm over his boy’s shoulder
at sunset walking home for dinner?
Have you seen the wood people adorning Wichita
or felt the ancestor's presence at a Powwow? Have you seen the sky boil, rotate
suddenly descend in fury; beautiful, captivating, foreboding, destructive
and sparing in twisting motion?
Have you experienced the hospitality of the people of Howard
or felt the birth pains of the Civil War in Lawrence and her sister
Pottawatomie? Have you heard the Wagon Masters “Hoa!”
on an autumn day in Morse, where the Santa Fe and California trails cross?
These surface on waves to ride crests of the prairie sea
coaxed by the undercurrents of Kansas.
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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. Read More Poems by ► Daniel Spees (PDF) |
Looking From Seventh Floor
By Emma Miller It is night and Wichita is all lights-- Bright white mercury vapors, Yellow high-pressure sodiums, Blinking neons, Ambers and reds. Headlights move along the Canal route. Street with steady traffic flow must be Kellogg. That thick aggregate of lights Could be downtown Wichita Where they drag Douglas. A flashing red light just now appeared. Where did it come from? Someone else is asking that question As he waits--- What will happen? It is night and Wichita is all lights-- Steady stalwart sentinels On guard through the night. I watch from my window. Beautiful sight |
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Lost Voice
by Larry Powers Wave upon wave the herds wandered across vast plains, endless prairies, stretching out, reaching to the horizon. The earth trembled beneath hooves; the noise of their bellowing echoed, thousands of voices blended as one. Tromping through valleys, o’er hilltops, en masse, moving slowly, methodically, single bodies crowding, indistinguishable, into the huddled legions of rolling fur. Clouds of dust and swarms of flies followed them into ancestral grounds. They roamed freely, proud and unfettered, preyed upon by the skillful Plains Indians, who sought only a source of sustenance: meals to appease their hungry bellies and furs for warmth against winter freeze, thankful hunters, taking only for need. Then the intruders came, pleasure hunters, torturing, slaughtering wave upon wave for the mere joy of sport, the thrill kill. Skinners, for pay, ripped away precious fur leaving pile upon pile of bleached bones and decaying flesh, the smell of death. Putrid landfills, naked corpses rotting, bones scattered across ancestral lands, until they returned back to the dust. Gone, the once great herds are no more, the sound of the bellowing, the trembling diminished and fragmented, a lost voice. Now, but a few of these great buffalo remain of what once formed the huddled legions, a remnant, protected on reserves, fettered. Hired mercenaries, ruthless marauders, leaving bones of ancestors piled in heaps, brought the herd to the edge of extinction. |
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) |
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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 |
