North Dakota

Fields of wheat, fistfuls of horse mane,
wide blue arches over arms outstretched get
sky bubbles caught in the throat.

The old school house kneeling diagonal
into space, space, and more space is forced to lay at last
where the bottom tastes of cattail and clover.

Look up and rafters of you throb
the grouse drum swallowed by silence
and the fluttering of gooseflesh.

Anything beyond sunshine slices scattering your fingertips
across the lips of the Souris swollen with rain doesn't matter.
Remember the rush of civilization soiling itself with excitement?
Don't bother returning from thoughtlessness.

You've found the scent of yourself against a great horizon,
let hills inhale urgency and exhaled fuzzy sticky thistles,
grasshopper foot prints, mosquito kisses,
toothy leech mouthed smiles to woodticklish love songs
steeped in chamomile, nettle, and mint.

Now you dream only golden yellow and skeleton white.
You are the beetle rattling corn stalk's spine.
You sway the unfurling ferns green outward always
and match the motions of lovemaking to the oceans of grass.

You are satisfied deep slow
in the itchy pain of utterly alone.
You smell a hailstorm coming like a flax flower.

You are at my center,
and whatever you do

you can't


leave it



quickly.