Big Bluestem Prairie

Grass tall as a first settler’s horse’s back

Still high enough to switch

Summer flies from long birds’ seeking cover

Man once thrived by words

Or ancient lore

And dreamed of wealth and immortality

For centuries adrift or marching to imagined lands

Now we’re all connected

By electronic instant chat, cable, games, politics

And immortality lives and dies

By avatar, text, or news

Human nature is ironic

In that it learns to first control

And then ignore

Until financial profits make reasonable a reconfigure of the original

On prairies lost and buried

Civilization advances, argues, stumbles and rises again

While current life pulses in and out by schedule

Tied to roads as lifelines and main arteries

Earth is as old as dirt

Fountains’ of Youth a delusional paradise

But prairie lands under soaring wings

Not perfect, but nearer visions in my brain

I am sad that so much land

Has been taken, sucked, and drained, plowed, and paved

Linger soul, amid a patch of forlorn or half-reborn prairie

And disconnect from microchips and satellite links

Understand a circle’s been completed

When old land’s been repaired, and salvaged

Only half is truly given back

Lost are friends forever that used to shelter there

They only dwell on lists, or shelves, photos, paint, or books

Under categories extinct, endangered, threatened

Spaces left are filled by species not our own

From garden, sky, water, land, invading what’s unique

This planet’s been through changes

But nothing so destructive than that which greed has done

Through fifty thousand years or more we lived

Without all values in a wallet and none as old as dirt

Blog editorial content and photography copyright of Charly Makray-Rice … Please ask permission before reposting. Thank you.