Big Blue Stem Near Water
J. Quinn Brisben
Water seeks its level and the land
Slopes toward it with the grass
Giving way on the banks of steady
Slow streams to cottonwoods lifting
Their seed on the wind in late Spring
And the willows dripping tendrils
In the shady water with bark
That will ease aches when chewed,
With big blue stem roots holding
Dark soil created by the grass itself
And its symbiotic tunnelers.
So the clear water teems with perch
And catfish and tender-legged frogs,
And the land in August is loud
With locusts by day and crickets by night.
The water carried burnt-out half logs
Ingeniously made for humans carrying
Beaver skins from far timber country,
Returning steel and glass and doom
In time for tall-grass prairie.
But old mounds where people lived
And a system always destroying and
Transforming itself suggest a return
Of big blue stem again by water.
