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Cover illustration:
‘Autumn Evening’
by Dawn Senior-Trask

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Driving Across the Prairie

In false dawn and fog, soft skiffs
of snow, pavement treacherous
with black ice, windows open
to the cold. I can hear the first
geese rising from the coulees
where they had spent the night,
heads beneath wings, their sentinels
alert to any danger. Sudden dun bulk
on the shoulder, shattered mule deer,
and in a few miles, again, again.
The light grows, the mist lifts. Red
gumbo ranch roads rutted deep
by the fracking crews twine down
the draws and up the ridges. Water
pools in low corners of hay meadows
where ducks bob in silvery riffles.
Every stock pond and pot hole full.
Antelope grazing the sage.

A Brief Ecclesiastes

Clouds cannot tell time,
nor do they count the days.

Hours or years,
minutes and eternities,
the moon is a light, like God,
that comes and goes,
that smiles,
then turns its face away.

Origami wind folds, unfolds,
enfolds the trees,
the leaves, the branches,
wind, tearing out sky
from its own
invisible paper.

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B. J. Buckley © 2024