We stood in the midst
of a great alluvial plain
and felt the horizon coming
at us like a storm, seeking us out.
We felt the wet land
shuddering under the waves
of an invisible sea, and herds
of buffalo thundering underground.
The sun scorched a hole
in the widest prairie sky
and the rough, whistling, russet—
colored grasses flowed at our knees.
We saw tawny hawks
sailing across the clouds
and wolves storming in packs,
and that’s when we closed our eyes
to imagine the wheatfields,
the sod huts and log cabins,
a stone church kneeling down
in the dust of the unspeakable.
It required a steady hand
moving across an empty page.
We would be a single voice
giving names to the bare places.
—Edward Hirsch, from “Iowa Suite”
Art Credit Mark Posey
