From plunder of Osage and Kiowa lands
From furrow and corn pollen
Earthworm and brome grass
From a moment of my parents’ passion
I descended from one grandpa’s fiddle
And the other grandmother’s hymnal
I keep arriving every time
The Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe blows through
From Aunt Ruth’s Love Star quilt
And Amelia Earhart’s icy altitudes
From Charlie Parker’s Yardbird
And Langston Hughes’ Weary Blues
From fescue and apple, Junebug and feedlot,
From plum-blossom honey and Devonian chert
From sunflower seed and Kaw-bottom dirt
I rise and follow my parents’ passage
Through timbers of lightning-struck churches
And towns tornado-twisted to splinters
Through moldy smell of root cellars
To lie on my back in fallow pasture
