Beyond the Red River

The birds have flown their summer skies to the south, And the flower-money is drying in the banks of bent grass Which the bumble bee has abandoned. We wait for a winter lion, Body of ice-crystals and sombrero of dead leaves. A month ago, from the salt engines of the sea, A machinery of early storms rolled toward the holiday houses Where summer still dozed in the pool-side chairs, sipping An aging whiskey of distances and departures. Now the long freight of autumn goes smoking out of the land. My possibles are all packed up, but still I do not leave. I am happy enough here, where Dakota drifts wild in the universe, Where the prairie is starting to shake in the surf of the winter dark.