In the Flint Hills, I by Pat Daneman

There is nothing here,

you people who live in cities might say.

No buildings, no bleating herds of taxis,

 

no stampeding crowds.

But stay awhile and you will learn the way

along the yellow paths,

 

feel under your shoes the bones

of white flint, the broad root grid

that spreads each season’s current underground.

 

You will see how many days of stillness

it takes to make the sky move,

how many months of drought

 

to map a riverbed, how many years

of wind hammering to build

an empty skyline.

~ Pat Daneman

Pat Daneman has lived in Lenexa, Kansas since 1986. Recent work appears in The Moon City Review, I-70 Review, Bellevue Poetry Review, and The Comstock Review. Her chapbook, Where the World Begins, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. She is poetry co-editor of Kansas City Voices magazine.

Guest Editor: Israel Wasserstein, a Lecturer in English at Washburn University, was born and raised on the Great Plains. Her first poetry collection, This Ecstasy They Call Damnation, was a 2013 Kansas Notable Book. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Blue Mesa Review, Flint Hills Review, and elsewhere.