Prairie Dreaming

So now you are mostly plowed under,
not allowed to display your beauty;
much like a woman abused
are frightening in your silence.

Man seized control
and turned you into pastures and fields,
railroads and highways
turning hordes of cattle loose
like Utah locusts.

No longer do you grow six feet tall,
are no longer blown
in waves like an ocean by the wind,
nor burned in spectacular fires.
And so it goes…

Man, always the greedy destroyer,
uses once, then spurns
except for the fenced-in cattle:
a tale old as Adam and Eve.
You were then not even grown up.

Now old and dreaming
what you had before man’s arrival,
you await the angel of fire
that will drive man out on his belly
to eat dust like snakes.