Planetary Stories Project

"To Act Globally, Think Locally – Through Stories"

Black Earth Institute

Place: Prairie City, IA, USA

A Dance For The Inland Sea
By Annie Finch

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A Dance For The Inland Sea

Water that moves, in a bodylike stream,
through its cool channels fills the warm prairie’s dream.
Waking to tend it, the grass-moving sky  

pours with grasses.  Big Bluestem’s drinking roots lie
nine feet down the waving, remembering sod
they have swum through, to feed on, to build.  When it swings
like a wing in small flight, when it sways,
turkey feet murmur, red three-toed feet sing.  

Little Bluestem, as copper as autumn or clay,
floating seeds past the prairie’s dense, watery hand
till they shimmer to columns, wet smoke on the land;  

Indian Grass, lapping up the spattering sun;
prairies step slower than palaces, down
under the teeming roof of the ground,
quiet as animals.  Then, when they rise,
prairies, like palaces, loom, and surprise.