Morris

I.

Oh Morris, the plains bring us to your door.

This western prairie is not kind, it is not benevolent;

it is brown and bare and flat and lovely,

the breasts of an old woman, of a young girl,

rushing too fast.

We never see your summer, it is a flash of heat.

There is only the feel of perpetual autumn, the trails of

swans, cranes, and pelicans leaving this behind,

leaving broken houses in eyeblink towns that even in spring are not green.

Beneath the unbending wind, the pelting winds that circle

like blue skin below the eye of the world,

beneath this clamor clench storm clouds, rolling clouds

tired of so much soil, so much potential, so vast a space as this frontier.

II.

Oh Morris, your midnight streets are cracked and windy

trees bending, time bent, leaves scattered,

uneven curbs and the hum of the plant somewhere to the south or west-

side suburbs and grey grids of homes, rope swings, kids on bikes.

5000 strong you factory workers, barroom glarers, staring at the

young money that just walked in through the door,

who only know these eight streets, from the hospital to the park,

Dairy Queen to Pamida, the ice rink a slick spectre,

grain elevators harvesting the horizon, gathering in, carrying

corn through chutes and shooting seeds,

spare piles of spilled grain lying dusty in gravel, dropouts who remain

washing dishes, making meth, getting drunk,

tripping down railroad tracks.

Those trains are not yours, they tear through the night

and push on to greyer stops, more grain, states flat and unimaginable.

III.

Oh Morris, look at us.

We trundle through the night,

bundle into classrooms:

shitty classes, whiteboards wasted, hours whored

to papers, posters, cigarette lectures.

We choke down dry rice, soft-serve, coffee in our hearts,

we are dancing. We are in love. We hate you, Morris, you are ours.

These same paths take us place to place untouched on lonely nights,

unrequited.

Let our pockets ring, call and answer, we will hear nothing.

Not furnaces roaring, not life behind dorm room doors, not sidewalks over secrets.

We will dig our mittened hands deeper into cold pockets, deeper into one another’s hands. Find some comfort there.

Fifteen hundred students at the TMC, laughing at the wind.

IV.

Oh Morris, we love you as if you are the only thing we know,

at 3 am when we only have each other.

This poem will go on long after we have gone

and been replaced by other shadows.