[net.poems] dakota

bigger (12/17/82)

Where the sun shines







somewhere on the plain
the Dakota cry down their bottles
about the fence
they sit upon

from the bottles bottom they
contemplate the wire that neatly cleaves the land
stretched between the poles

feet dangle on their grassy side
backs to rich fields of wheat
shining in an evening sun
(and a buffalo murmur moves on
a wind across the flat table of
land that preserves an idleness)

two hundred years ago
there was no wheat,
but neither was there glass
and now when a long sun touches
the empty bottle
and the far line of sky and fence
they wonder, behind a deeper red,
a bottle tinted, ruddy face,
from where among their preserved grassland
comes the next
harvest of rye.