Prairie Work
by Susan Niz
published in Ponder Review, Volume 2, Issue 2, Fall 2018
I walk fatly through field
Like a freckled, yellow-green pear
With my apple daughter
Running ahead, my hips circling
A slow, steady pace
My chest relieved of the weight of her limbs
As she was carried last year
When green shoots pointed a finger
Through decay in a meadow too far
To reach with the heaviness of the baby
In my arms
She points to a clutter of birds
Swallows, like icons of angle,
Who dumpster dive in edifice grasses
Torment field-working mice
Who harvest seeds, as squirrels hastily plant trees
For our future
While bees canvass with sticky yellow fingers
For the change
They want to see in the world
We hide and seek
On two sides of the same, safe
Silent bark
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