There were words in the prairie
forbs—whole sentences diagrammed in the elms
            that began in the grasses
                        and sedges before them.

But now they are buried in the centuries,
rising in the occasional    black clod of dirt, shaken
from the root of a weed with no name, somehow
missed,

morning after morning by the entire family walking beans.

And the birds
                                                    peck at the syllables—mostly
                                                    hulls, labials, and stems—
                                                    and carry them
                                                    to the rocky ground,
even to this spoor,
pocked with scars.

Some lucky days are followed by an evening
breeze that sweeps up the kernels
of sound in the corn
until they catch
                                    in the claws
                                                            of the trees
arranged in a way
                                    that could pass
                                                            for a poem.


© 2004 by Terry Lucas