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.

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