Back Issue  Fall 2006

Pat Sclater           

PRAIRIE DANCE

 

Their wounded land asked them for slow, austere

Reserve. In silence, from sky-vaulted height,

They saw the evening's slow sun-veil appear

And bend tallgrass in rhythms made of light.

 

At home their rhythms were the circling grind

Of hand-milled wheat, the flare of gas-lamp's flame,

The patient kneading hands, the letters signed.

Then one, then some, then all the dancers came.

 

The hall, all ordered noise, skipped a beat.

A fiddler hummed the first note of the tune.

They danced in patterns grave, restrained and neat

Yet wild and glad.  Their stillness came too soon.

 

Their being still together would not fill

The void stillness left.  Then what's left?  Will.

                                               -Pat Sclater

This poem appeared previously in LAND REPORT. Pat lives on the Missouri – Kansas line, keeping an eye out for Tornadoes. A Midwesterner maybe, but she loves the dances of New England.