Water that moves, in a bodylike stream,

through its cool channels fills the warm prairie’s dream.

Waking to dream it, the grass-moving sky

pours with grasses. Big Bluestem’s drinking roots lie

nine feet down the waving, remembering sod

they have swum through, to feed on, to build. When it swings

like a wing in small flight, when it sways,

turkey feet murmur, red three-toed feet sing.

Little Bluestem, as copper as autumn or clay,

floating seeds past the prairie’s dense, watery hand

till they shimmer to columns, wet smoke on the land;

Indian Grass, lapping up the spattering sun;

prairies step slower than palaces, down

under the teeming roof of the ground,

quiet as animals. Then, when they rise,

prairies, like palaces, loom, and surprise.

From Calendars