You Wonder Why We Don't Get Along

I'm bromegrass, blestem,
lespedeza like a fur ball in the hand.
Nine-Mile Prairie is my hang-out. I live there,
weekends, with the ticks and the jaybirds,
with the swallow's slow arc
from cedar to cedar.

I'm the Platte, crossing and
re-crossing its own channels
I'm a prairie liar; I learned to walk
on switchgrass, on cactus, toddling after
a big man in boots, checking on his cattle
Barefoot--silly baby--I
couldn't keep up,

and then his Herefords wheeled and charged.
I'm used to the blank stare.
A snort in the nostrils
my lullaby. I'm running still,

unshod feet
over unplowed ground.
No screams from me:  my mouth open,
soft as the evening primrose.
Silent, chased by my herd.

When we leave the ATM before dawn,
clutching new twenties,
when we drive toward the sandhills country,

when the road becomes a two-lane,
when we are upbeat for no good reason
except maybe two travel mugs
of very hot coffee and cream and cocoa
like you make it,

when the tip into daylight
is about to happen,

when grasslands begin to show
in the windows,

then I like to imagine our lives in front of us
ticking under the belly of the car
as we eat up the road.  Look,
there's more,
more.
Our life together moving like that, you
believing in me, I believing in you.
Fragile we're not. Speed is where it's at.

We face what's coming:
grasslands parting like a sea
on either side of the asphalt.
We roar past; we leave little farmhouses
bobbing in our wake, trees swirling,.
You and me, Babe, you and me,
immortals on a road trip.


Credit: These poems are from  Beside You At The Stoplight

© Copyright, Marge Saiser .
All rights reserved.