Old Chevy Truck and Prairie Choirs
Dust
rises high behind the old Chevy truck,
hay
bales stacked to the sky.
Dust
caked nostrils, sweat down my back;
buffalo
beans and prairie buttercups.
Way
out there, a prairie song -
whirr
of grasshoppers, shrieks of hawks,
whining
keen in the shortgrass hills.
Winds
blow lonely, winds blow strong.
Drive
on out to the far horizon,
old
rock and roll on the radio
in
that old Chevy truck with my brother.
Sipping
whiskey, going slow,
he
seeks barns that are old and falling
and
rusty harvesters, ghosts of the past.
I
seek insect medleys, birdsong choirs.
cowboy
songs and old bluegrass.
Coyotes
running fences, flocks of geese
flying
high in a cloud-curdled sky.
I
stop the Chevy, look out the window with a sigh.
I
yearn to be feral, I wish to haunt rivers,
to
run with antelope ‘neath skies of blue.
I
long to sleep under a star-pocked sky;
wake
in the morning hung with dew.
Laying in a truck bed
on
a sultry summer night,
under
a slivered moon and a
sky
full of falling stars.
Our
seventeen-year-old selves,
speaking
of fate, of wishes;
of
faithfulness and futures.
And
you told me the story
of
a man that had caught a falcon,
wild
and vicious.
And
of how he trained her
to
return to him, always return to him.
First
with the weight of chains and
the
tight bonds of leather,
over
and over, and over and over.
Always
pulled back; always returning.
Until
finally the falcon wore only
floating
skeins of silk on her talons.
But
they were enough to bring her back, always.
To
the man. Disciplined and tamed.
And I held in my hand the letter
you
had written to me.
About
how we would marry at eighteen;
have
four children - two boys, two girls.
About
how we would winter in Florida;
about
how we would be together.
And
you squinted your eyes and held your hand in the air,
catching
stars and making them grant wishes.
And
each of those things in that letter you made into a wish.
You
held the stars tight in your fist
until
they flicked dark in your hands.
Like
a firefly doused.
And
the tears I wept ran
from
my eyes to my ears and
lost
themselves in my hair,
as
I stared up at that night sky.
And
you thought they were tears
of
happiness.
In
truth, I could not breathe.
You said the story of the bird
was
beautiful;
that
it told of faithfulness
and
being true.
But
I thought that story was
sad,
so very sad.
To
that broken-spirited bird,
floating
silk was heavy as chains.
You
wished to catch stars in your hand;
grasp
them until they gave up their wishes.
But
I wanted the stars to follow their instincts -
to
fall freely, to immolate themselves
in
the skin of the sky.
With
passion.
The
next day I told you to go away.
The
next day I broke your heart.
Deliberately
. . . you said.
And
the rumours on which
small
towns thrive said that
you
hated me.
That
I was faithless and untrue.
As capricious as a falcon’s heart;
as
unstable as a dying star.
But,
in truth, I just wanted to be
a
bird that flew free.
In
truth, I just wanted to be a star
that
knew ecstasy.
Linda
H.Y. Hegland is an award-winning poetry, lyric essay, and non-fiction writer
who lives and writes in Nova Scotia, Canada. She writes the occasional short
story. Her writing most often reflects the influence of place, and sense of
place, and one’s complex and many-layered relationship with it. She has
published in numerous literary and art journals and has had work nominated for
the Pushcart Prize. She has previously published two books of poetry - ‘Bird
Slips, Moon Glows’ and ‘White Horses’, a book of lyric essays - ‘Place of the
Heart’, and a book of ‘verses and vignettes’ - Remember in Pieces.
“I am an artist you know . . . it is my right to be odd.” ~ E.A. Bucchianeri
www.seekingsoulsphotography.com
www.hegland.wixsite.com/fathummingbirdfarm
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