From the High Plains of Texas Panhandle
The long arroyo gapes before me.
I can see all the way from Dumas
To Amarillo, some forty-five miles.
Grain elevators are a permanent fixtures here,
They are interchangeable with a hundred others
In a hundred half-dead and dust-covered towns.
They stand tall like bishops
In the chess board distance.
Huge sprinklers are strung together,
Many-legged spiders, watering
Winter wheat and summer corn.
Scrubs oaks along the roadside
Point northeast permanently
Bent by prevailing winds
Over the high plains.
I can look down from Dumas
Onto land so flat
The edges of earth are beveled
Off in every direction I look.
By Steve Heins, 1982