Where the Long Grass Grows

Subtle, sibilant sounds sing as the night wind hurries by

Songs in native tongues once echoed beneath the prairie sky.

Twinkling stars overhead sparkle in the black velvet night,

Undulating waves of long grass ripples in the pale light.

Prairie grass, long grass, growing in swathes both green and wild.

Roots sent deep for water and fed by bison dung thick piled.

The moon’s soft silver glow illuminates each rustling wave,

Once home to buffalo and the hunting ground of the brave.

 

Bison are all but gone; braves are on the reservation,

But the high grass still grows as it has done since creation.

Where the grass dulls with dust, intermittent rain washes them clean.

The wind whispers softly with sighed words that are felt and seen.

The settlers came, turning over grass with bright iron-clad plows

Planting wheat, corn, and beans; killing buffalo, bringing cows.

Prairie grass retreated before the pioneers’ onslaught,

Long grass hid in pockets, going where the white men could not.

 

I lay in the tall grass, watching the heavens overhead.

The prairie’s night breeze comes whistling over my outdoor bed.

My bedroom’s open plains; the sky’s a stormy canopy.

Seasons come and go, seedtime and harvest will ever be.

The long blades make my bed; its soft mattress fresh and fragrant.

The prairie grasses wave in each breeze, sweet and abundant.

I stand on rolling knoll; long grass surrounds me like the sea.

I’m a ship set adrift still feeling lost and yet so free.