In the vanished prairie

2016
Rachel Moritz

The flowers catch in fire sleeves
The ants tend their roadside ditches
The invented hawk and the veteran swallow
Flourish past voiceless trees
The metal blades of the sod cutter
The great dead of railways
And the dessicate flesh of bison and cattle
The clouds in their sky shell
Warm voice, shelf of hand:
Bent by the grasses unrooting
Caterpillars from slick blades
The particulars don’t require us
The ghostly matters not in genocide
The genesis precise in water meeting water
The interpretive panel on its singed
Posts, medial horizon, vocality of empire
The fort first called Anthony pitched
On its vital cliff
And the view stretching miles
Shell of sky, shelf of voice