A canoe made of horse ribs tipped over in the pasture. Prairie flowers took it for a meetinghouse. They grow there with a vengeance. Buck posts float across the flooded swamp Where my father rode in and under. Different horse. He held her head up out of the mud And said how he was sorry Till they came to pull him out. We found the white filly On the only hard ground by the south gate. He said she'd been a ghost from the start and he was right. We covered her with branches. There were things he had the wrong names for Like @3rose crystals.@1 Though They were about what you'd think from a name like that. He told us somewhere on Sand Creek Pass Was a crystal that spelled our own initials And we should try to find it. We walked through sagebrush and sand currents, looking. He said pasqueflowers and paintbrush Wait till Easter to grow, Then they come up even with snow still on the ground. I thought I'd seen that happen. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...OUR COUNTRY by JULIA WARD HOWE LAST SONNET (REVISED VERSION) by JOHN KEATS THE CHEAT OF CUPID; OR THE UNGENTLE GUEST by ANACREON TABULA SECUNDA IN NAUFRAGIO by JOSEPH BEAUMONT TO CHILDREN: 3. THE GOLDEN DAY by WILLIAM ROSE BENET SHEMA-YISRAEL-ADONAI-ELOHENU ADONAI-ECHOD by NATHAN BERNSTEIN |