out there, under redfire gold and lupine blue,
a boy’s just run up a prairie hill—dew heavy shoes,
grasshopper in hand spitting brown and kicking—
and smelled wind from the west
heavy with soil and wheat,
combine diesel and pickup truck smoke
homeward, he watches storms curtain sunsets
from the highway overpass,
waits for thunder to shake the ground
waking, he’s swept away in dark current,
bumps over rocks at the bottom of the river
