She was just a schoolteacher then
Walking away from the town
                                              in the late afternoon sunset,
A young woman in love
                                       with a treeless place,
The scattered windmills and pounding winds
Of the whole prairie sliding toward dusk,
Something unfenced and wild
                                             about the world without roads,
Miles and miles of land
                                     rolling like waves into nowhere,
The light settling down in the open country.
 
She had nothing to do but walk away
From the churches and banks, the college buildings
Of knowledge, the filling stations
                                                     of the habitable world,
And then she was alone
                                        with what she believed—
The shuddering iridescence of heat lightning,
Cattle moving like black lace in the distance,
Wildflowers growing out of bleached skulls,
The searing oranges and yellows of the evening star
Rising in daylight,
                               commanding the empty spaces.