One of my poems from Dec 2002 published in South Dakota Magazine (Jul-Aug 2005). Reprinted below. It was kind of nice to open up to the poetry page and find one of my poems that I had submitted a a few months ago among the poems for this edition. The first selection,"Prairie Rock Crossing," was published in the Jan-Feb 2005 edition and now the second in the group in the latest issue.

West Wind

Tickle me with flower sweetness
lift my hopes little dreamer.
You come with the sun
breathless, then fervor,
playful prairie wind.
Darkness
reclaims your vigor
and coolness
holds my cloak until
the morrow
when foolishness returns
and curses cannot calm you.

I added the earlier one here too. The page had a photo of a rock pile that is making the rounds in several publications. It was an honor to have the photo on the same page. It was taken by Bernie Hunhoff the owner of the South Dakota Magazine.

PRAIRIE ROCK CROSSING

At the bottom of the rock pile
Covered by soil and late arrivals
The smell of sweat and aches
Rises like a spirit from that heap
Old Philip was under it all
A support that all us family got.

Men and boys struggling
To make a field fit for a plow
Rooting up points smaller than a fist
Yet sharper than rough lament
Of “work too hard.” Still, buoyed
Forward by savage memories,

Rock piles we made.
Points we saved as trophies
Yet, did not, could not honor them.
We did not understand the land,
It grew wheat, made bread,
A sacramental companion to wine.

Russian wheat and Deutsch
Sent west to replace a bison herd
With pointed steeple and iron cross
Thus Peter became the new rock
But rejected prairie stones ascended
To anchor a father’s dream.

  ¶ 2:32 PM

  Latest submission to Poet's Against the War listed in the June 17 "poems of the week."

Nobody Hero

Iraq
rookie bonus
medical care payment---
lifetime VA visits . . . no legs
attached.

  ¶ 3:01 PM