Star or Plow
Inside the longhouse the dead are arranged
according to rank corrupt bodies
shrouded in animal skins
dog teeth potsherds cut wood
stacked along the outer walls
as women collect the bones of their kin
For the charnel housebows arrows tobacco
a bear pawa turtle effigy pipe
a fledged sparrow rubbing its neck
on a hackberry brancha mask of seashells
finding its way west by trade
a buffalo jumpa new blind flood
Shattering the Clovis & leaving a mark
in the black mat running through layers of strata
after water filled the land
horsecameldire wolfbison antiquus
extinct or expatriated“that phraseless melody”
perhaps in the rediscovery one you will be found
One “shiverer round the door”
*
Unearthed in the black court
that line in the rock for ice & empty
for star then plowthe sure-to-come
is never close enough
to unsettle the edge of the human landscape
a narrow tract of grass along the highway
Black-eyed Susans blazing stars
& cattails in the mediansalong the railroad
a biologist discovers a rare wingless grasshopper
keyacris scurra in the kangaroo grass
Jefferson’s enumerators sent west to populate
his drawing roomhis science of specimen & capture
Of geometry democracy steel steam
seed & theftfor the good of us all
for the good of shining persons
with hearts all one stonea country bird
heels to law & needa country boy
locks the plains in a grid
We are all freeholders still
*
This alienated posturewe went out upon
the world as“went out
upon circumference”to fix a flux inside
the raina rain that follows the plow
as it drifts & divides
to gain a foothold against a ghost
As if air could be netted
“sturdy little countenance against the wind”
fifty million bison now
forty-five million cattlean outline for our eventual
inability to escape from circumstances
home implies a border implies
The mountain plover a ground feeder
the burrowing owl occupying a prairie dog’s nest
to roam is not to be without
form but rather to be formed in serial
unsluiced from a territorial tyranny
stands of blue bunch wheat grass & willows
Unlining a creek bed sunken silted & fast
*
To sluice or still a creek with cattle
carcassesin winter a wintry condition
moves steadily down “the dream
of civilizing a wilderness”more than half the range
had lost more than halfdegraded by grazing
the riparian the headland the hill
How could imagining lead to obsolescence
a wayfarerthe root’s white foot a force
under snow or fireincreasers & decreasers
hay-balers barbed wire & antibiotics
this underpinning“a postponeless creature”
no darker despot so restful in the enclosure
The enclosed constructions of the present
become hard to recognize as home
for bluebird for Henslow’s sparrow for bobolink
these fields without fencerow
or windbreaknew oligarchy
“the sound of the prairie being plowed
Was that of a fusillade of pistols”
*
Knowledge as the composition of a body
subsoilaquifertrail of thorn & thistle
at any given momentdivisible
savagenomaddisciples when the west was
abundant in fescue bunchgrass & light
unbent“if what we could—
Were what we would”cessation implies
successionsediment ash dust sand
seeda borrowed dwellingitself an echo
yourselfdisplacedenvy what is already
false or scarce“the color of the grave
is green”“the color of the grave is white”
Is reprieve to replace usno employment here
in this weedy plutocracy of parceled plots
with no way to overcome
enoughlife as almost straight
as most unlikea snowbound hillan elk
in a winter rangea blight of dry lightning
Mountain scissoring a big sky over grass