Prairie 5
13 lines✦
fed the boys who went to France in great dark days. Appomattox is a beautiful word to me and so is ValleyForge and the Marne and Verdun, I who have seen the red births and the red deaths Of sons and daughters, I take peace or war, I saynothing and wait. Have you seen a red sunset drip over one of my corn-fields, the shore of night stars, the wave lines ofdawn up a wheat valley? Have you heard my threshing crews yelling in the chaffof a strawpile and the running wheat of the wagon-boards, my cornhuskers, my harvest hands haulingcrops, singing dreams of women, worlds, horizons?
✦
