OKLAHOMA PRAIRIE

Oklahoma prairie in late winter: 

tall grass holds shades 

of amber, rose, gray-green, 

and flows around tangled 

islands of blackberry thickets 

where rabbits hide from red tailed hawks. 

Bright air pushes its cold finger 

down the collar of my shirt 

to find the sweat collected there. 

A row of sandstone blocks 

tells a farm was here. 

The wooden chute to a cattle pen 

rises up out of the sea of grass, 

a silver wedge with surface weathered 

into the lines and ridges of a contour map. 

It stands as a sparse monument 

to those who were here before 

depression wind blew westward. 

Their passing left few marks, but soon 

old homesteads will reveal themselves 

as clumps of iris in the spring.

          G.W. Bill Miller

RETURN OF THE SUN

Let the sun pierce the dark clouds
and point down with long golden fingers.
Let its light fall on shining rain-soaked fields
and illuminate the shadowed green of earth.

Turn your eyes to the light
and blink at the unaccustomed brilliance.
Watch as the lead-faced sky opens her
dazzling blue eyes and smiles.

          G.W. Bill Miller