Custer County, 1886

Wading through the grass
thick and high
on our way to pick the sweet summer fruit
fingers raw from packing our soft sod house.
Squinting into the summer sun,
I stare at the land, wide and spacious
full of future.
My sisters, tall and wise, speak of their own homestead;
a piece of land for each alone.
I listen with envy,
knowing my time is a long way off.
The rain begins to fall
like silence.
I kick the mud from my high brown boots,
push hair away from my face,
and look ahead at the canyons fulls of purple plums as big as fists.

It is hard to imagine this place
this beautiful place
trapped in a winter fury,
but I feel the stiff wind on my forehead
and I know the day will come
when blinding snow will work its way into our bones
like death
and we will father together in our tiny home.
The wind, white and relentless,
singing like a lost child
Eugene's violin urging us onto the mud packed floor
urging us to kick up the dusty hay
and forget the cold forever folding around us.
And in that tiny home
we will celebrate the openness
the freedom of the
West.