Scrappy town on the prairie
carved out of sod and bittersweet.
Cornfields, sorghum, milo, ditchweed.
Grain elevators and town bells.
Cemeteries and old churches.
Dust to dust and
fields to food.
Your houses are as varied as your people.
Some flaking and listing.
Others preserved and renewed.
Whole families and histories
have sprouted, grown, been harvested and plowed under.
In past years, immigrants from the Eastern US and Western Europe
poured out of train cars and root cellar doors
with frontier dreams and pioneer grit.
All come from away; and some left, and some stayed
to put down roots and root for Cornhuskers
to raise crops, children and opera houses
to write love letters, and prize-winning novels
to sell coffee, wine, and hometown groceries
to host Cather scholars and book clubs
to restore Victorian homes and dig modern dugouts, and
to welcome us—the bereaved and reprieved.
O, Red Cloud, we thank you.
Thanks to the kind folks at the Willa Cather Center for hosting our Farther Along writing group. Beautiful place, beautiful people.
