Belle Plaine

Previously published in Amsterdam Quarterly

Belle Plaine

Islands of trees
among long
prairie grass,
clear cut with a
strong Germanic
vision.

Hulda and William,
the root
of this family,
planted wheat
amid a siege 
of locusts.

Prairie
turned to grain,
then to black,
as swarms devoured
until stalks no longer
whispered in evening winds.

They were determined 
to start again, 
again, until those 
stems could pay 
the land's 
yearly toll.

But too close
to lost,
Hulda 
claimed it 
as only 
a woman could.

She wove 
each of her children
through those fields,
row by orderly row,
forever tied 
to that land.