By Darrell Petska
PROMPT—I am grateful for ...
Like reclining bodies these Baraboo hills lie, where Sauk and Ho-Chunk, Fox and Kickapoo tribes weaved earth and sunlight into lifetimes. Black Hawk, Yellow Thunder, NawKaw—chiefs among chiefs whose peoples, nurtured by their Great Mother, harmonized with blanketing hardwood forests, unbound rivers and streams, and abundant wildlife that enlivened body and spirit. Bellowing tractors and bawling cattle herds now strip these once-pristine dells of native words and ways—indigenous memories guarded forever in wind’s stark sacristy by thermaling soars of eagles. This concrete speedway rising, descending, hurries me past meanings and values shirked by today’s Anthropocene ways. Cirrus admonitions hover above these resting giants of yesterday, their indomitable spirits still bristling green upon their rolling quartzite beds. Resigned to nothing, accepting only their Great Mother’s terms, they appear landed, stakeholders in perpetuity. While modernity grants me passage through these bucking, tumbly hills, undying eyes still glint in sunlight as they see me on my way.
Darrell Petska is a retired university engineering editor and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. His poetry appears in Verse-Virtual, 3rd Wednesday Magazine, Nixes-Mate Review, Amethyst Review, and widely elsewhere (conservancies.wordpress.com). A father of five and grandfather of seven, he lives near Madison, Wisconsin with his wife of more than 50 years.