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Posts Tagged ‘plains’

……………………It Reigns

The sky is blue-cloudless, but still the sky rains,
Not water it holds, but the dust of the Plains.
The mist that is brown like the land, not the sky,
Now wearies the nose as it worries the eye.

The Plains are a table, as flat as can be,
And wind blows there often as careless and free
As stallions not stayed by a hand or a rein
Run wild o’er the prairie with high flying mane.

Now, north wind is blowing, both here and up there,
And carries its burden for others to share.
The distance it travels is three hundred miles,
And neither their faces or our faces have smiles.

For their land is blowing away from its home
And one day will leave them as bare as a bone,
While we are all suff’ring from soil that won’t stay –
It settles on hills that the rains wash away.

———————————————————–

© Dennis Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2014.

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I ate my way through Texas
   One Christmas season past.
All it took was an appetite,
   And driving hard and fast. 

I breakfasted in Corpus;
   Ate lunch in San Antone;
Had peachy cream in Fredericksburg,
   The biggest ice cream cone. 

I darted up to Llano,
   And ate some barbeque.
I still felt rather perky
   As I drank some Mountain Dew. 

I snacked a bit in Abilene;
   In Snyder, I ate steak.
I passed on a second piece of pie –
   ‘Twas all that I could take. 

In Post, I drove through the Dairy Queen,
   Had a burger and some fries.
I began to see a line of food
   Rise in me to my eyes. 

In Amarillo, I chug-a-lugged
   Three liters of some coke.
I think it was the salty fries
   That made me a thirsty bloke. 

The Oklahoma border was
   Then not too far away.
And I was glad, for my stomach had had
   A fairly busy day. 

My car was tired; I’d driven far –
   Nigh seven hundred miles.
But I found a place, bought a root beer float
   And I was full of smiles. 

I had them fix a gallon
   Which I drank till Perryton.
And I paused to rest, with a sudden pain –
   Well… – there was more than one. 

I stood outside my resting car;
   Then faced toward Lubbock – south.
And all of a sudden I let a belch
   That blew off half my mouth. 

And I watched in awe at the wind I saw
   That blew down ‘cross the plain
And kicked up the dust and the tumbleweeds
   Worse than a hurricane. 

They said it turned the day to night
   The dust storm was so bad.
And the boom of the belch was an atom bomb
   (They thought, from Stalingrad). 

They had it rough, but the belch was enough
    To change me and my mood
I hit the border of Oklahoma
    In search of a little food.

—————————————————

The route in the poem is from the Texas Gulf Coast
north through the Panhandle of Texas to the Panhandle
of Oklahoma, and is about 700 miles.

—————————————————

© Dennis Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2014.

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Picture of Rocky Mountains

Image via Wikipedia

         The Coming American

Bring me men to match my mountains,
Bring me men to match my plains,
Men with empires in their purpose,
And new eras in their brains.
Bring me men to match my prairies,
Men to match my inland seas,
Men whose thoughts shall pave a highway
Up to ampler destinies,
Pioneers to cleanse thought’s marshlands,
   And to cleanse old error’s fen;
Bring me men to match my mountains –
   Bring me men!

Bring me men to match my forests,
Strong to fight the storm and beast,
Branching toward the skyey future,
Rooted on the futile past.
Bring me men to match my valleys,
   Tolerant of rain and snow,
Men within whose fruitful purpose
   Time’s consummate blooms shall grow,
Men to tame the tigerish instincts
Of the lair and cave and den,
Cleanse the dragon slime of nature –
   Bring me men!

Bring me men to match my rivers,
   Continent cleansers, flowing free,
Drawn by eternal madness,
   To be mingled with the sea –
Men of oceanic impulse,
   Men whose moral currents sweep
Toward the wide, unfolding ocean
   Of an undiscovered deep –
Men who feel the strong pulsation
   Of the central sea, and then
Time their currents by its earth throbs –
   Bring me Men.

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