Stevens County Verses

Painted pony under shade of dry pine,
at the foot of the mountain in a meadow.

Blue backed barn swallows swoop into the rafters
of this barn that is older than I and my fathers.

Grendel the farm dog lies in pathways in the sun,
too old and tired to move for the children.

I strode the deer trail in midday,
until a buck and a doe scattered at my trespass.

‘These wildflowers,” I say, “what are they?”
Yet I grew amongst them, I never knew their name.

In the meadows of lilting wildrye,
the cattle and deer feast together amid dilapidated barns
and mysterious mounds of stone.

Side by side, white birch and pine
rise up in the forest.

These barbwire fences across acres and acres
though decrepit never seem to fall.

I saw the mighty river from a bend in the road
that I had never known was river view.