Prairie

May 8, 1984

In her upper room she wrote a poem. To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee. Under the amazing blue sky

the long grass slopes, bends,

is lifted by the wind,

the constant wind in whose motion

the vast body is never at rest

trying out the figures of a timeless dance

yet lies all its great size in great peace, as if it had lost count of the hours of the day

to rain, or was waiting for that New England clover and a bee to blow in.