Poem: Grasslands by Keith Moul

Grasslands

By Keith Moul
QuailBellMagazine.com

(“Take the hand that’s offered”
Is the counsel of prairie history)

Seldom do undulations of slim stalks cease, as wind will not.
​

When a boy I ran into that wind as if to rise airborne.  I rushed
Into great adventure of the hunt; my reproach of hungry hawks,
Thirsty to find where they ate their kill; how pronghorns sight,
Then burst to flight; how beetles scour the Rockies rain shadow
To track herbivore hoof-prints.  My play was notably bloodless.
 
Childhood must be short: I rushed into manhood to embrace what
Wind came naturally to mean – equipoise with conflict that builds.
 
Obdurate bits borne on wind hornet-sting my grassland universe;
Blood bursts from face and arms, signing on for revolution; blood
Deep red from my day’s work erupts from the cistern’s rim; letting
Blood needs regular nourishing, draws neighbors, draws friends
To my maelstrom; we friends on the land sniff blood-smell in air.
 
Then we eat, and rail to confuse oncoming foes, masters of my place,
Our guns blasting at air.  We brace abaft the wind to conjure: herds
Lay piled, skinned of their blooded hides; their meat dried to brown
And lit on cairns, as though in ceremony denied forever to the tribes.
 
Wind carries in these memories too, not yet lost to ancestral times.