Prairie Paradise

© Stephen Weaver – Prairie Sunset

The red of the grass made all the great prairie
the color of wine-stains, or of certain seaweeds
when they are first washed up.
And there was so much motion in it;
the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running.

I felt motion in the landscape; in the fresh,
easy-blowing morning wind, and in the earth itself,
as if the shaggy grass were a sort of loose hide,
and underneath it herds of wild buffalo were galloping,

I wanted to walk straight on through the red grass
and over the edge of the world, not very far away.
The light air about me told me that the world
ended here: only the ground and sun and sky

were left, and if one went a little farther there
would be only sun and sky, and one would float
off into them, like the tawny hawks which sailed
over our heads making slow shadows on the grass.

Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become
part of something entire, whether it is sun
and air, or goodness and knowledge.

At any rate, that is happiness;
to be dissolved into something complete
and great. When it comes to one,
it comes as naturally as sleep.

© Willa Sibert Cather. My Ántonia
Book I – The Shimerdas – Chapter 2

Posted for dVersePoets Pub where Anna Montgomery
challenges us to produce erasure poetry.  This derived from the brilliant Willa Cather, where every page is a poem!