New Poem Release!

Prairie Verses

The Texas Panhandle
Longhorn steers stagger by blistering sun atop Stove Mesa.
Dry as leather, tongues curling, eyes even sweat.
Once sturdy hooves now soften like melting candle wax.
Blood boiling, backbone baking, it’s a 128 degrees F.

The heat is on in the Texas Panhandle

Sidewinders carving curves across hot sand.
Rodents burrow deep for cool root cellars.
Predator and prey share scarce shade in this swelter.
Finding shelter is urgent business, delay is death.

The heat is up on the Texas Panhandle.

Old cowboys, sag almost prostrate, aching in the saddle
Their steady Appaloosas oozing foamy-white between the flanks.
Tumbleweed and Switch Grass crackle at every hoof-fall.
So hot it will make you cry, feet tinder dry, you’ll want to die..

Kansas Golden Plains
Nose tastes the sweet smell of ripening grain.
Corn, soybean, alfalfa abound in furtive fields.
Vast, fertile acres carefully tilled and tended.
Oh, how beautiful these golden Kansas plains.

America‘s bounty! Harvest for the world!
Sweat shed in the honest labors of generations
Families of farmers toil from rise to set.
Seeding land, tending hearth, affirming self.

Blessed with courage, fortitude and dedication .
They preserver, unheralded heroes, proud citizens.
Pilgrims of the fields, bearing all misfortune, undiminished.
Tilling success with nobleness, loving country above all else.

Confirmed in soul by self-control, every gain divine.
Finding liberty by overcoming strife for their way of life.
Adversity ignored with faith implored, God’s healing grace.
Leaving legacy enduring, reward is merit in the Highest Place.

Dakota Buffalo
Wooly rovers, in millions, roam dominant and unmolested.
Waves of great buffalo spilling over the Dakota landscape.
Pungent with the musk of careless, carefree wandering.
Rumbling hooves beat out an anthem of freedom.

Honored, revered, to sustain the native Lakota Sioux.
The Great Spirit’s gift of food, clothing and shelter.
Slaughtered without regard by wild-eyed white hunters.
Killed for trophy, heads severed, carcass left to rot.

Restored in enlightened times by men of conscience.
Managed by science, penned by fence, housed by man.
Cloistered from those beautiful for spacious skies.
Protected from roaming in amber waves of grain.