Michael Adams – Pawnee Buttes
Dusty bones in moonlight,
buttes above prairie
Juniper under sky
Over cattle guards, through gates and cow pies,
out of the doors we live within and under the open sky,
I seek a place for sleep.
Where is wolf? Buffalo?
Bear?–Old man in his furs
Wild tenants who lack proper currency,
They all took off, a beat up old ex-Hogfarm Rainbow People school bus full of
the wild, driven by wine-swilling pissed-pants coyote, bound for some god-
knows-where town in Mexico.
Wind in the juniper
voice of the land
Listen! It says
I am the song of the prairie
death chant of Old Ones
voice of seasons, moons, storms
grand web you’ve forgotten:
in love you kill, eat, die, are eaten.
Chicken plucked from barnyard rivalries,
steer, never to know heifer, but the rancher’s
castrating knife.
Wild cries as you stalk aisles
supermarket hunters
Peas, potatoes, carrots torn from Earth
to make new flesh and bone–
presidents and postal workers,
televangelists and teachers.
But the chain is circle
delight of fungus, molds, worms
we mulch our way to eternal life–
marvelous, spiritual true love everywhere,
everywhere.
meat of love in an America of flesh
Under juniper I dream the song
of a new America
where two-legged, four-legged,
winged and swimming
all find voice
America
seamless
wild
her great prairies unfenced
where grasses heave through pavements
weave the bones of long dead cattle,
where bison thunder across freeways
and the wolf’s howl runs once more
in our blood.
Michael Adams
November-December 2001 Earth First!
Uploaded by ColoradoWildlife on Jan 17, 2011 Note: This is a roughly 270 degree view of the visual corridors near the Pawnee Buttes, on the Pawnee National Grasslands near New Raymer, Colorado just west of Sterling and about 50 miles east of Fort Collins.
The camera swings first from an easterly look to a north then west then south look and back again. We all know that alternative energies such as wind generation are and will be of increasing importance in the future.
The unanswered questions remain what will the long term impacts be of improper siting of such facilities to both the local native wildlife populations, in this case particularly prairie falcons and other birds of prey, and what are the implications of imposing these facilities in such majestic visual cooridors?
