I have come to the only place I would have stayed.
Where winched away I wandered solitary plateaus,
I am still come back, grown into the shale,
grain by grain replaced cell by cell.
I feel fall's shuddering sweep through me.
On horse I chase prairie's hallo
and I am become the bison, and the antelope
and the echoes off the canyon’s edge.
I am in dropseed, and the big bluestem;
my praise is the fireflash dawn over micahed bluffs.
I am not anything more than this:
one note, one tint, one texture
picked up casually in rose quartz,
and I would not care at all, being lost among the scree
where the tornado tears existence up
and flings it spent aside, pulsing, warm and quick.
I am the crust, the sliding plates beneath the skin of sod,
and I endure, hour by hour, and do not tire,
nor bear fleeting wishes anymore,
only reflect blue battling sun,
gash straight onto the leaning plain.
Even had the ghosts drummed charms
to confound conjunction of night to day
I would be here,
hunting where the puma prowls,
kicking up parchment yesterday,
surveying the harsh and wild expanse
that I will ride, and range, and roam.
