My Own, My Native Land

The golden grain stretched out like sheets upon the Kansas plain, like birthright, innocent behind the festered sun. Some were unaware of upstarts in the rolling Minnesota countryside, defiant to the blistering avalanche of corn. There were the sidewise glances, prudent in their reticence, worn pencils tucked behind their bibs, the markets' vagaries aswim, Chicago far the east of home. In Iowa as well, the warriors of the plough, the timeless men of bread, the conquerors of earth and sinew, beast and baronet, to thread the cloth of motherland before our birth. Thereto in Illinois, my cradle sanctuary nested from the mountains and the alien sea; I was the listener within this deep midwestern ground. It is not still where I have been; the voices and the footfalls make their print in time and may not be erased. And though my ashes fly in space my breath, my bliss, my bower rests forever in the heartland of the earth. ~