Crossroads

Crossroads

The land, swathed in green,
stands ready for us,
as we kick up clouds of earth,
our van stumbling through the wash
that hints at a future bridge.
Little fingers of prairie grass
wave at the passing trains.
Pottery pieces rise to the surface
leaping out of their dust beds
to be found and fumbled with.
The storm clouds are constantly
billowing like country skirts
colliding and inflating and
playing tag with the huge,
ruddy farmer's face of the sun.
From under this juniper I see
our stretch of rails -
our side of the mountain -
our neighbor's hill -
our cattle pond -
I am turning and turning around
to see what is ours.
Cheery surveyors' flags
whip pinkly in the wind.
Every foot of space is contentedly
inhabited by velvet-sided cows,
foraging grasshoppers,
the stink bugs, the blister beetles,
the jack rabbits and toads.
All the same natives who buzzed
and cowered here so many years.
Back when pot makers and
arrowed bow-men sent columns of smoke
up, up from this hill.
A hill now characterized by cattle scent,
sparkling with quartz and iron dust.
In quiet early mornings I imagine
it is grazed by mule deer and pronghorn
and patrolled overhead by crow and buzzard,
ready to pick clean the landscape
after coyote and cougar have dined.
We will fit here, we will live here
because man longs for a place
to make his own, and woman longs
to be settled in her Home.
And the land is ready for us.

(c) Tasha Chinnock 2006