10-1-2013

I had been
explaining the prairie
to my sons when
the Fox Sedge and
Culver's Root
leapt up around us,
and they were suddenly gone to me
among the saddle-tall stalks.

Long before,
I fell upon a
shoreless plain
and watched it
unfold this way.

For years I rolled,
a wordless fool,
between autumns,
and gatherings
of unlit streetlamps.

I stumbled over well-vined
pumpkins,
and the church-watched sorrows
of grace
pulled away and out from underneath.

But thank God
for those low-angled twilights
hanging off my belt,

old as iron mines:

 I would not have otherwise come across my boys,

their legs
shaking,
knit together
near
the grown-over paths.