To prairies and the thrum of first cicadas in the sonoran desert ~

 

Prairie Sure

Would I miss the way a breeze dimples

the butter-colored curtains on Sunday mornings,

or nights gnashed by cicadas and thunderstorms?

The leaning gossip, the half-alive ripple

of sunflowers, sagging eternities of corn

and sorghum, September preaching yellow, yellow

in all directions, the windowsills swelling

with Mason jars, the blue sky bluest borne

through tinted glass above the milled grains?

The dust, the heat, distrusted, the screen door

slapping as the slat-backed porch swing sighs,

the hatch of houseflies, the furlongs of freight trains,

and how they sing this routine, so sure, so sure—

the rote grace of every tempered life?

Carol Light