Some broad American flower is growing
            on the prairie, opening in intervals,
            a heart. Walking from the train tracks
            the flat-faced drunks on Hennepin don't care.
            They're blond combines, dark-rusted John Deere parts
            squatting out in the rain. How many have tasted
            the lonely waters of the Mississippi
            as it flowed past my dark northern rose?

            It's too late for hornets.
            All you find in the cold rain are the dry bodies
            crushed in pieces on the dashboard.
            Their mud-huts returned to earth. Their stingers dull.

            If you travel West, descendants of German farmers gather corn
            from small parcels of prairie where the earth turns black to yellow--
            like the long grass growing until October
            you've forgotten the hum of flies looking for anything sweet,
            the black-eyed flowers singing names you cannot possibly know.
            The Minnesota earth giving up summer, giving up heat.

Copyright © Albino Carrillo, 2002.  All Rights Reserved.