Around the Absence of Bluestem
        "everything has to arrange itself around that absence"
                        —Peter Read,the father of Mary Read, a victim of the Virginia Tech shooting

Around the absence of bluestem,
at the one-eyed top of a silo,
a turkey buzzard preens and waits

Around the absence of bluestem
we have arranged lines and angles
in four-square order,
we have metered spring
and laid the coils of tile
to pull what's too much
off the land

Around the absence of bluestem
we have mowed the nests of marsh wrens,
and the monarch larva,
and the painted turtle,
we have mowed the painted turtle

And we have laid tar,
and we have laid concrete,
around the absence of bluestem
and around the absence of pasque flower and puccoon and vervain
we have arranged ditches easy to mow
and blacktop striped and gouged

And thus we are kept in line,
ordered as commodities.

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Copyright © 2022 Athena Kildegaard All rights reserved
from Prairie Midden
University of Arkansas
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission