South Dakota Days

There’s a soft glimmer of day on the horizon As a vanquished sun is swept away by dusk’s dark flow With a slender slip of a cloud stretched North to the South That floats on the sweetness, the texture of marmalade glow. Dark clouds above me are still catching last light And the air is still fresh from a passing shower. Overhead there are magnificent canyons of sky, Clouds eroded by meandering rivers of air, Untouched stars shining through, And flashes of lightning that break dance further South Reminding less attentive humans feelings are electric too, Random flashes, like a child remembering how to cry Without understanding when it is effective. And the crickets are singing their harsh waves of sound With combined voice that could wake up the dead Or float lovers to their dreams with strange musicality. What a chorus! It’s like they’re all suitors of one woman Hanging out in the darkness under her window Their legs resonating in an orgy of praise. Is there anything alive that does not ooze sensuality? I’m driving myself to a late dinner in Pierre And there’ll be no one waiting to greet me, But loneliness is not the same as being lonely I even stop as I’m driving to write down these words For when my muse speaks I almost always listen For the music of the night is so fragile, Though her words are my constant companions. Like raindrops they cool me with their touch, to my senses glisten, The thoughts she brings are flowers that follow mountain streams And her rhymes, even when it’s cloudy, are stars in my night. Arriving back in Blunt, the cricket song, seems somehow softer, Though hardly less insistent, cries “Don’t you know we love you?” I insert some extra lines and thoughts into what has come before, Into an already flowing work, dollops of color added madly, Just more cricket noise, hoping to touch your heart. I wish that I had stopped once more beside the road as I returned. “That was such a beautiful thought! What was it?” I wonder sadly! Apparently the female that male crickets seek has not chosen yet. But with this poem my day is done. Brian Johnston September 7, 2015