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OOC4g3 7 ..---- ~' Natural Connections -- ----===- ~ - ----- -= -.:,1.-- - -- ""- ----- "-- At Home in a Word Poems by Steven Hind You call this blanket of grass Prairie, because you were born A member of a tribe who took to The lean feast in that name. Your lips hold the word iri To give thanks just so: Prairie You say, arid hear the grass Speaking through the thorny wind Season after season. You sit Wrapped in that word. Last Night Before Cold Weather "To begin with,there were fewer People and more grass." the storyteller That Trick of Silence This grass goes bronze with weather, Goes black with darkness ' And the sky goes far, fued , With cold lights, as one owl Says a thing he likes, so well He says nothing else. This slab oflami, never So much anything in the public Mind as a place to get behind you From Kansas City to Denver, , Was just out there,out where So little stood upright past The hundredth meridian That every tree was remarkable, , Every stream new chance You could not have predicted. You could drink and wash Your face and look around Where the vast nothing held open Its face to teach you that Trick of silence. Wood to last the night and Breath pushing into the night, When I turn from the f"Ire, Squatting, convinced: if there Is a life after this one, I will Come back here to stay As long as the grass stays. Afternoon of the First Day Reprinted from That Trick of Silence , Washburn Uni- versity Center for Kansas Studies, 1990, by permission of the poet.' Steven Hind is a native of the Kansas Flint Hills. He lives and teaches in Hutchinson, Kansas. People lived here with Dames Like Sitting Bear (Satank), Powder Face and Bird Chief. I walk along the Hills, looking Up now and then, watching The hawk stretched across The wind's hand, running out My hand over the long blue stems, Wanting my new name. 29