My Prairie Thinking

Trying to pick thru the thickets

I find I don’t do it well

It’s paralyzing, in the same 

Moments as all possibilities

Are alive,

Those with promise, those with

Sorrow,

Those that confirm

The is and shall be,

Still,

I don’t know how to navigate

Them. 

It is a fortune, though,

That I can go outside, literally

And pick through 

The thickets,

And perhaps

Right now, since there’s been 

Too much rain, and 

I bent a mower blade

But have the new one

And do not like to not

Do what I’m supposed to be doing

For lack of 

A blade, as Robert says,

“A boy job,”

I’m off-balance. 

It’s an unnecessary hiatus, just when 

I’m nearly fully

Into always-healing

Spring, the one that just 

Sprinted through, right on 

Into summer, 

Hence with ferns wild,

Peonies in riot blooming south 

Around to north,

Apple trees and climbers 

Setting buds and blooming, 

Ankle high grass and weeds

Needing my mowing

And me needing my zen.

I have other outside things to do

Though, and so I do,

And feel the heat when

I stretch to hang a basket, 

Damp and full of blooming things 

Planted heavy in the fiber liners, 

Or go out to clip 

Branches that get in my way 

When I am mowing, 

But I don’t think I can

Lift the canopy with the

Big trees now myself,

Although I did three years ago.

My heart pounds too much

And the humidity rolls through me 

With its certainty,

Flows down my face 

And drenches me,

Small mighty river

As I tell myself to get things done.

The canopy needs to be taken up,

No question, just a wee 

Lifting, not too much, because 

There is refuge there,

Deep shade, green filtered sunlight through 

Old oaks, linden, maples, and 

Beyond back to my gardens, 

And the flowerings out there,

Ornamental pear, weeping cherry

And the smokebush. 

Along the new outside

Worlds around here 

These last few years, there’s 

Bramble, 

Wild honeysuckle

Rambling rose

All kinds of things growing 

In the near-two decades

We’ve been composting 

Into our small frontier, stewarding 

As best we can a future in this place 

For someone, 

But I digress, my point was

A trim will do.

I spin like a disappearing world

When I’m doing these sorts of 

Things, or even trying. 

The looking up is sending me into

This vertigo, and sometimes if 

I wait until it stops before I 

Tell myself that it’s all right to wonder

If I’ll be able to keep my bearings,

I see that I am quite steady looking 

Forward, where my vast has always been,

Salvation’s opening spaces.