An Ode to Red Cloud, Nebraska

Scrappy town on the prairie
     carved out of sod and bittersweet.
Cornfields, sorghum, milo, ditchweed.
Grain elevators and town bells.
Cemeteries and old churches.
Dust to dust and
fields to food.
Your houses are as varied as your people.
     Some flaking and listing.
     Others preserved and renewed.
Whole families and histories
     have sprouted, grown, been harvested and plowed under.
In past years, immigrants from the Eastern US and Western Europe
     poured out of train cars and root cellar doors
     with frontier dreams and pioneer grit.
All come from away; and some left, and some stayed
     to put down roots and root for Cornhuskers
     to raise crops, children and opera houses
     to write love letters, and prize-winning novels
     to sell coffee, wine, and hometown groceries
     to host Cather scholars and book clubs
     to restore Victorian homes and dig modern dugouts, and
     to welcome us—the bereaved and reprieved.
O, Red Cloud, we thank you.

Thanks to the kind folks at the Willa Cather Center for hosting our Farther Along writing group. Beautiful place, beautiful people.