It is strange how hard it is to speak of what
is most central to the poems the ground they stand on, the horizons they inhabit.
The Illinois prairie its remnants in central Illinois where four feet of priceless
top-soil mono-cropped and increasingly corporate owned or worse yet sold off
to developers images an incredible lost fecundity natural and cultural. Images
in its mysterious doubleness the people who once depended on it and those who
depend on it now. Images with the miracle of flowers and grasses crowding and
renewing with each change of season hope for the future, faith that there is
a future. The prairie is our birthright. It is the heart of the continent as
the Midwestern rivers are the great cleansing arteries. It is a hidden republic
of many voices and deep roots that I try to recognize and honor in my poems.
- John Knoepfle
east in mclean county
by John Knoepfle
this is a country of moraines
old prairie could have
gone on forever
mounds timbers points
groves islands savannas
a language of prairies
farmhouses on the high places
barns outbuildings
washed in the clear air
corn fields and soybean
enough for everyone
east of ellsworth
an osage orange hedge
stiffens the curve of the earth
four crows carry the sky away cawing
primroses and meadowlark eggs
by John Knoepfle
they come from their
timeless periods the indian
paintbrush the plaintain in a monthly
halo where no voice
has been lost in the western
maytime of dropseed
and meadowlark eggs
hidden in the brave wind
larkspur wild strawberry
a voice talking in the womb
of the primrose a catalogue
of ravaging
sweetheart the box
terrapin the regal fritillary
blues that distill the eye
you are drawn through these veins
so natural the cottonwoods
echo in the wind the voice
saying who you are
all shadows pale greens
the sharp reds in spangles