Prairiepoet

Author: Dennis McMahon

  • Greasy Grass Country

    In the tongue of the Dakotah

    it is the country of the grass.

    The grass thats greasy in the wind

    For the way it slips and swirls

    whispers in the breeze

    catches light like waves

    in a sea of opalescent green

    It isn’t just the wind

    there’s a feeling too thats there

    of a majesty beneath the sound

    that slips within my soul.

    I ask myself sometimes

    is it an echo

    of when the world came first to be?

    A kind of grace note maybe?

    On an instrument played by God

    when he holds his finger on the key

    plays a note so low it almost isn’t there.

    I wonder too if others hear it

    or is it only me?

    I wish that I

    could climb inside that note somehow

    feel the world from there.

    It is the elemental essence that I feel I think.

    A reminder

    that spirit never sleeps

    In the country of the grass

    that’s greasy in the wind

  • About October

    There’s something rare about October
    with its honey colored air.
    It doesn’t seem to need the sun
    rather it kind of glows from inside itself
    like looking at the world through polished amber.

    There’s something rare about October.
    Coolness that defines it’s texture on my skin.
    Ripened heads of thigh high brome
    that silhouette the prairie wind
    and the aromatic tang of wood smoke
    from an open fire.

    There’s something rare about October.
    Cornstalks like yellowed phonebook pages
    rustling in the prairie breeze.
    The earthy smell
    of a furrow freshly turned.
    The roiling surf of cottonwoods
    swaying in the wind
    or the haunting call
    of a southward bound Canada Goose.

    I remember tramping cross these plains with my Dad
    prairie grass tugging at our knees.
    We thought that we were only walking our Dakotah home
    But looking back upon those times
    I think that we were actually
    learning what it means to Be.

    There’s something rare about October.

    Mac Mc Mahon