Weather-worn bones of homesteaders’ houses rise from dusty fields now fallow and frozen;

Shimmering and grey, prairie driftwood, now brittle and dead;

Where once paint shone like a beacon in the unforgiving winter light, holes riddle walls through which powder snow blasts uninterrupted, borne on bitter new-year winds;

Offering glimpses into rooms, once private, where conversation, laughter, fear, and love were made

While nearby, the rusted remains of a horse-drawn plough is barely visible through a stand of desiccated prairie grass,

The dry hissing of the leaves a lone, sonorous reminder of how the west

…was lost.