Beyond the Red River
The birds have flown their summer skies to the south,
And the flower-money is drying in the banks of bent grass
Which the bumble bee has abandoned. We wait for a winter lion,
Body of ice-crystals and sombrero of dead leaves.
A month ago, from the salt engines of the sea,
A machinery of early storms rolled toward the holiday houses
Where summer still dozed in the pool-side chairs, sipping
An aging whiskey of distances and departures.
Now the long freight of autumn goes smoking out of the land.
My possibles are all packed up, but still I do not leave.
I am happy enough here, where Dakota drifts wild in the universe,
Where the prairie is starting to shake in the surf of the winter dark.
Copyright Credit: Thomas McGrath, “Beyond the Red River” from Selected Poems 1938-1988. Copyright � 1988 by Thomas McGrath. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.
Source: Selected Poems 1938-1988 (1988)