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M - Q ... Kansas Poems
Alphabetically sectioned by poem title Select Below to View Another Group: |
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Measuring Up
by Robert D. Carey Gritty, stubborn pioneers Settling on Kansas plains; Persisting through cycles Of dreams and despair. Grasshoppers, cinch bugs, Blizzards and droughts; Prairie fires, crop failures, Loneliness and isolation. Facing it all head on By faith and strong will, Our ancestors, Our heritage. |
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Night Fires
by Carolyn Hall My headlights trace an asphalt seam through deserted Flint Hills. Night air hints of sweet embers. An orange halo crowns the next rise. Radiant flames bookend my path. Yellow-capped crimson streaks dance into a moonless sky. Mesmerized by the celestial flare, I slow to watch the ebb and flow of the serpentine blaze. Amber glazed clouds of smoke cascade around me. Purged by fire, this tallgrass prairie sustains through generations. Past and present converge: Sacred space, holy dimension, nature's pyre unleashes primal essence. Buffalo hooves thunder. Shadows of wild mustangs stampede through the hills. Night birds take flight above haunting melodies of cedar flutes. Earth drum beats native rhythm, distant voices chant stories into the future, past the mirage of the moment, beyond the speed limit of sight. |
Night Skies
by Frances Enloe Grandma would tell us her people said Europe's starry sky doesn't compare with the night sky of Kansas. In the deep blue sky of Evening or at midnight's Darkest, the prairie stars sparkle like Christmas lights glittering on a trans- parent background. |
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Noticing Two Cedars
by kl barron Two cedars haunt the trail I follow They squat compressing all they know in shaggy directions that branch the sky into jagged blue pieces I do not know the weedy history they define among the grasses Political people with a preference for religion placed them there, I suppose, to catch the chill off the wind when it blew down the hills of the prairie These trees have meditated long to get by with what they didn’t need The task only the task has kept them upright after generations of pioneers and sneering coyotes marking them with their dribbles of time (continued at right) |
continued ... Noticing Two Cedars I didn’t notice them until they called to me with their almost visible voices through the mist of an ancient civilization they appeared in the distance two hunchbacked sentinels bidding me draw near Except for the stones of a ruined fence they were alone waiting patiently I stood on the silent grasses and ashes of others I did not remember anything but the cedars’ prairie breath and the blue between their branches It is good to have a body to move around in Now when I follow the trail I notice two cedars peering over the further hills watching and they hold me with their being |
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On Roniger Hill
Chase County, Kansas; near Hymer, Kansas by Steven K. Nagle Prairie silence was broken, as iron tools struck rock, The barrel-chested men, chiseled each quarry block. The wagons were loaded, with masons and stone, Each solid cube lifted with a heave and a groan. Dust trails behind wheels, another haul on the way, The clouds seen for miles signaled a start to their day. From Hymer and Elmdale and Matfield Green, The homesteaders came, as Heskett built his dream. Stones perfectly placed, through sweat and through skill, Within the earth’s hold, on the side of the hill. Admired from miles along the old dusty road, She was more than a house or a simple abode. She was the pride of the prairie, a gem on the plain, Withstood violent storms and wind driven rains. She cradled the infants and watched old men die, She saw a mother’s joy and saw the widows cry. She continues her perch, overlooking the field, Her history preserved and her secrets revealed. The stone beauty stands proud on Roniger Hill, She remains eternal, as if time stood still. |
Old Roads
by Bev Lethem Davis We packed a thermos full of coffee for the trip to Philly. Not THE Philly, but what Phillipsburg High graduates now call their hometown.We called it the Burg. Lately, when you eat at the Third Street Bakery, you can get a Phillipsburger. It's big, it's well-done and it's covered in goop on a huge bun of white flour meal. Not a lick of fiber in the thing. But it fills you up. We think we’ll try one on arrival. On the way to Philly, we drive the old roads, the two lanes. 281 out of Russell, home of former Senator and Presidential candidate, Robert Dole. And through Plainville, boyhood home of Jerry Moran. Both men are Republicans. We aren’t. It’s Republican Country, this home state we share with them. This doesn’t keep us from returning the wave we receive as we meet friendly farmers in mud-covered pickups traveling along the highway. The wave is of the first finger, barely lifted off the steering wheel. A sort of tip-your-hat greeting along a lonesome road amidst rolling Kansas plains dried auburn under winter's sky. My husband calls our old Durango the lumber wagon as it lumbers along carrying supplies and paint to help my recently widowed sister redo her full-to-the-brim house of memory. Maybe it will help loosen her chain of pain and move her to more comfortably remodel her very different life. Losing Larry changed us all. When the redo is done, my husband and I will slide furniture back against the walls, hammer in nails to hang photos of old memories but leave room for new. Afterwards, we'll take the interstate home, slide in the Prairie Rose Wranglers cd to cover our quiet thinking so we don't miss the Phillipsburger we didn't try, one-fingered waves, two-lane roads, or our brother-in-law. |
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Prairie Idyl
by Mark Scheel Hail-stripped cottonwoods weep like battered wives; yesterday's wheat fields molder in galvanized tombs. It's been this way before: the patriarchal sun turning his gray side out like a banker locking his door. Main streets lie fallow as desert bones. Tumbleweeds dance on doorsteps. Logo caps commiserate round gun-racked pickup trucks while only the crow's cry mocks the stillness. And I -- turning a shoulder to the dark wind — pilgrimage past the boarded school, slip the wrought-iron portal's latch, drop to one knee and lay a peony on my mother's grave. --first published in Kansas Quarterly Read More Poems by ► Mark Scheel (PDF) Prairie Clouds by Barry R Barnes Crest of a small hill Eyes to the sky Parade of clouds slowly roll by Some in the shape of things I recognize Green grass under my back Cool I’m relaxed Lazy smile I can see for miles I put my head back Shut my lids for a while Motionless I lie Experiencing a drug free Kansas high. |
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). Read More Poems by ► Stephen Meats (PDF) |
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Prairie Morn
by Sally Jadlow Pink dawn creeps across Kansas prairie. Reveals rusty rolling hills, peppered with grazing cattle, tall signal towers, and pumping oil wells. Clumps of trees give up their brilliant fall colors to the full light of day. Static starlings fill power lines perched like so many finely-worked french knots. On silent signal take flight in fanciful dance. Clusters of scrub cedars stand shoulder to shoulder to catch winter snow drifts. Placid ponds reflect peaceful skies streaked with gauze-like clouds. High tension lines march single file across brown landscape. Hold millions of volts in their insulated hands to deliver light into dark places. Read More Poems by ► Sally Jadlow (PDF) |
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. Prairie Home Sold
by Winnie Smith Prairie home sold. Heritage strewn with the bang for each auction item. Stuff to others, gut-churning reminders to me. The recall of each ... its own chapter. I am an honor student. |
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A Prairie Churchyard
by Mel G.Hebert It’s a hot, summer day in the land of my birth. here to visit my parents resting ‘neath a cover of earth. In a lone Kansas churchyard dating back to the past, when the territory first settled in the hopes it would last. It’s a relic of history, built so long past gone, near a pioneer town flattened by a prairie cyclone. Lines of thin, fleecy clouds float idly by, traveling ever so slowly ‘neath the pale blue sky. A merciless sun is bent on spreading its heat o’er the vast, waving fields of ripe, golden wheat. Scanning the grave stones defining this plot, I note sadly the number has grown quite a lot. Yonder! There are the graves of my parents. Nearby my grandparents too. There. There. And there - kinfolks before them, some that I never knew. Uncles, aunts, cousins and more, schoolmates and friends who I’ll see nevermore. I wander about. Skyward motion catches my eye, as a raucous crow caws noisily by. Melancholy floods me and I wonder why such creatures live when so many folks die. The spell is broken. It‘s time to take leave. I’ve visited my people. It’s past time to grieve. At the gate, I look back with longing, each eye with a tear, as a soft, muffled sound of shuffling feet reaches my ear. It’s those generations before me marching on to their due, and the generations behind me taking their place in that queue. Then a hushed, whispering chorus says “Don’t weep. Be now of good cheer! We’re waiting - - and lovingly will greet you when your time is here!” |
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