The night empty and my mind 
black as this silent field I drive beside 
filled with dead buffalo bones 
turned to dust beneath 
bluestem prairie. The highway 
running through it a splinter 
wedged into the vast palm 
of the plains. I’m lost in the center 
of America. Lost as we all are 
from neighbors, from ourselves. Job lost, 
hope lost. Lost to all I’ve known. 
And I can feel the center 
of my mind breaking and scattering 
like grasshopper sparrows tossed 
in a storm that squalls and rages 
a long time before finally it calms 
leaving only the threat of thunder 
moving east, leading me. 
And with morning ready to reveal 
the horizon, I can almost see, 
or imagine I see, or want to see sparrows 
in the dark beating their wings, 
as if trying to lift the storm-
bent blades of Flint Hills tallgrass. 

Bio: Rick Mulkey