Crossing the prairie
On gravel and roiling dust
So much road to share
Tag: Saskatchewan
Summer Harvest
Heat haze barn shimmers
Wheat grains ripened in the sun
Harvest underway
Leviathan
Swallowed whole
By the leviathan
An expanse
Improbably wide
Impossibly flat
Exceptionally fertile
Here am I
On a strip of gravel
Running forever
North and south
Feel no larger
Than the pebbles
Crunching underfoot
In the dust
And no more significant
The Straight Path
The master told her students
This is the path to enlightenment
“But it is so straight”, one replied
True, said the master
“I expected the path to be difficult!”
The straight path is difficult
“How can it be?
There are no mountain passes to find!
No intersections or forks to choose from!
No sharp curves to negotiate!”
Many students nodded their agreement
The master shook her head
The straight path is difficult because
You want to climb mountains
You expect there to be many paths to choose from
You believe there should be sharp changes in direction
One student had sat quietly through all this
Listening while looking straight down the long path
As far as she could see
Finally, she spoke
“Walking the straight path is impossible
For one who seeks insight
From every roadside attraction”
The master smiled
I am your student!
Getting Over Canola
Prairie crossings
Keeping time
With the endless swag
Of powerlines
Skimming along
The road unreels
Mile after mile
O’er canola fields
Intersections
And railway lines
Break the monotone
With highway signs
This poem’s kinda wonky
Now that’s a fact
But canola‘s tough to work with
I wish it was flax
Grain Bins
Dotting the landscape
Checkers on a checkerboard
Harvest time: King Me!
Gravel Grid
I traverse the plain on a gravel grid
Left turns, right turns, always perpendicular
A jagged diagonal cutting from highway to highway
Beneath cerulean and cirrus
Six tires kick up dust so fine
It infiltrates the teardrop
I spent months
Making water tight
Small price
To drive through
This sparse, vibrant paradox
Heart of the prairie
A tabletop landscape dotted
With silos, barns and homesteads
Spread widely across the checkerboard
Of wheat, flax, canola and corn
To some, perhaps, a vast empty space
But from this tabletop to yours
Comes the bread
We spread the butter on
The Great Retrieval
On a sun saturated plain
The things made by hands and their machines
Grow weary with time
Soon to be retrieved
By the Earth
And the things which need
No self-consciousness or master
To suffuse the landscape
With life and beauty
Pix to Words 