Keeper of the Plains
Where currents of the Little Arkansas churn
into wider waters of a deeper river, he rises
in silent silhouette high above urban treetops
in singular one-dimensional weathered steel—
plumed headdress tilted backward, downward,
palms turned skyward in cosmic supplication.
His ancestral kin—Kansa South Wind People—
had once gathered grain, hunted game there.
Their fires rose in columns of smoke vanishing
into an indigenous universe—or another one.
That maternal flatland from an evaporated sea
gave full term birth to Kansas, Wichita, and me.
These days, wheat farmers scan the southwest
horizon for signs, perhaps a distant diorama
of an entire storm with silent lightning flashing
inside thunderheads. Thumbs tucked in bibbed
overalls, these modern-day keepers of the soil
search the sky for what to do on the land.
Contentious winds whip riverbank trees and sweep
across surface water. The five-ton, noble emblem
keeps secrets, both ancient and instant. He holds
in trust stories of these two rivers where once
a 1950’s teenager, a son of the city, came of age
in the turbulent confluence of passion and taboos.
Calvin Ross has contributed many stories and poems to the Class of 1960 website. Click on the underlined titles below to read some of his work.
