The Llano Estacado

If you’re a staked plains, dry-land, long view man:

a sky’s worth. Some even sow the dry playa

mid-summer with sorghum, the cotton plowed under

after early hail. Thus, not every farmer keeps

an old broken homestead sacred as a graveyard.

Today, no Sharpshin on a pivot for an omen,

no stoic farmer on a turn-row changing water.

Among a little wind grit, in a grid on a grid, somewhere

like the crossroads of outer space and Earth, Texas,

a handful of ragged elms withstand a long sway

of heat and wind. These old guards of a home haunt

the field but wither even as ghosts must. Honor them

with a walk among homesick bricks, and prophesy good.