Today's poem is by Kathryne Lim

Still World with Bison
       

On a stretch of highway known as Turquoise
Trail, dividing a field of thistle and sage,

a man lies flat on his back. The earth
around him dug out for its sky-colored stones.

The purple Sangre de Cristo mountain range
lies ahead beyond a row of tiny windows

lining the penitentiary. Low adobe walls
outline enclosures for buffalo the prisoners

used to tend. The pens stand empty now
as an inmate's open palms, while bronzed

broncos stand poised mid-gallop in a blown
world. The man sinks into the earth imprinted

with tire tracks, soles of shoes, old bottle caps.
In a no-hitchhiker-pickup-zone he is motionless

as if fallen from the weight of his own body,
pinned by the underbelly of the world.

Tweet

Copyright © 2023 Kathryne Lim All rights reserved
from Constellation of Wings
Pine Row Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission