Prairie
7
Playing their flesh arms against the twisting wrists of steel:
- what brothers these
- in the dark
- of a thousand years?
●●●
A headlight searches a snowstorm.
A funnel of white light shoots from over the pilot of the Pioneer Limited crossing Wisconsin.
In the morning hours, in the dawn,
The sun puts out the stars of the sky
And the headlight of the Limited train.
The fireman waves his hand to a country school teacher on a bobsled.
A boy, yellow hair, red scarf and mittens, on the bobsled, in his lunch box a pork chop sandwich and a V of gooseberry pie.
The horses fathom a snow to their knees.
Snow hats are on the rolling prairie hills.
The Mississippi bluffs wear snow hats.●●●
Keep your hogs on changing corn and mashes of grain,
- O farmerman.
- Cram their insides till they waddle on short legs
- Under the drums of bellies, hams of fat.
- Kill your hogs with a knife slit under the ear.
- Hack them with cleavers.
- Hang them with hooks in the hind legs.
