mining for gold

A poem found on the Internet, a poem written by a former army buddy, room-mate, friend, and confidant:

GREAT PLAINS, A FRAME OF REFERENCE

What really got them in the end—
those women who didn’t make it,
who withered and blew away
in the open—was the wind.
Space, yes, and distance,
too, from neighbors,
a piano back in Boston.

But above all, the wind.

In pained letters
you hear it
shriek hysteria from sod huts,
unutterable loneliness that boiled
up off the horizon
and sucked dry their desire
as it flattened the stubborn grasses.

You turn then to photographs
that confirm
the contents of the letters:
bony wives in plain black dresses,
prematurely undone, adrift,
betrayal like accusation
leaking from rudderless eyes.

The wind. Even as it scoured
the skin it flayed the soul,
that raked, pitted shell.
And how like the Indians,
appearing, disappearing,
no fixed location,
not event a purpose one could name.

The Cheyenne, at home
with the wind from birth,
had no pianos.

© 2005 Peter Ludwin