in the stillness of unsilent prairie
in contemplation of a past unknown
who was it lived long, forty years
within walls of stone
and timber, who loved
a man or just
endured a life beneath this unrelenting
sky to wake and work with
roughened hands
heart toughened by solitude
and time passing
or have I misunderstood, incapable
as I am to hold this vast expanse?
but you were not
built of stronger stock you breathed
the land unromantic
into your blood
to conjure a home, a family
where there had been none.
you might have given your best
muscle and sweat or languished
who can know? yet
here stands the testimony:
a door, a room of antique smells
a confinement of trees you cut
a fingerprint in chinking
a look across the hills
a sigh still hanging in humid air
so long ago who felt her own pulse
throbbing against a sunset and
suffered her primitive legacy into the
next obscure generation
and the next?
hot wind, but no photo
remains and so
this day I paused in your place
light-years beyond what
you might imagine
to witness and recall