The prairie’s passing flatness is full and broad,glittering white in frigid winter, with unruly stalks of weed and grain still standing
plowed fields in warming spring, furrows plowed deep awaiting seed
quilted landscape stitched with fence posts and scrub brush in hazy summer
golden grains rustle and nod in autumn’s embrace
glorious skies host sunshine, cloud and meadow larks
thunderstorms roll, dramatically flinging drenching rain and hail
dusty sideroads, paved highways and power lines stretch town to town
All that flatness has inspired me to take one more step
seeing a forever distant horizon but knowing the land allows me to pass
echoing train whistles and growling tractors telling me
‘here are places to grow and there is much planting to be done’
“I like to think of landscape not as a fixed place but as a
path that is unwinding before my eyes, under my feet.”
~ Gretel Ehrlich, “Landscape,”
Introduction to Legacy of Light (1987)
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