Daddy's Birthday Poem

I too remember, when I was a child,
The prairie with its flowers running free
In waves before the winds -- a verdurous sea
Of rippling rivulets still undefiled.

In modest beauty, quiet, lazy, mild,
The flittering butterfly and humble bee
And singing grasshopper sipped dewdrop tea
From every flowering weed that winked and smiled.

It once sustained a thousand thousand herds:
In summer storms the bisons' histories
Resound again in bright thunderbirds wings.
Winds whisper ancient privacies: the words
Of Indians who moved in mysteries,
And all their secrets, safe in sacred things.


Copyright 2005 Anissa Nedzel Gage