#PoetryBreak: Prairie Spring

Prairie (M.A. Reilly, South Dakota)

Prairie Spring

Willa Cather, 1873 - 1947

Evening and the flat land,
Rich and sombre and always silent;
The miles of fresh-plowed soil,
Heavy and black, full of strength and harshness;
The growing wheat, the growing weeds,
The toiling horses, the tired men;
The long empty roads,
Sullen fires of sunset, fading,
The eternal, unresponsive sky.
Against all this, Youth,
Flaming like the wild roses,
Singing like the larks over the plowed fields,
Flashing like a star out of the twilight;
Youth with its insupportable sweetness,
Its fierce necessity,
Its sharp desire,
Singing and singing,
Out of the lips of silence,
Out of the earthy dusk.

#PoetryBreak: Prairie Spring

Rising (M.A. Reilly, South Dakota, 2010)

Prairie Spring

Loreen Eiseley

From Prairie Schooner

Killdeer screaming over the flowing acres
Of bronze grass now the buffalo are gone
Make a wide eery silence. In the midst of crying
April has come, but madow flowers alone
Spring up to greet her. No more the hooves will thunder
Of bison moving northward in the spring.
No more the violet by wet black muzzles
Will be cropped under—a long silence follows
After the flashing and exultant wing.