Doug Ramspeck

Abstract Prairie Morning in July

If, as Nietzsche says, truth is merely a mobile army
of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms,
then why does this stream bed abstract itself amid
                                                            the tallgrass?
And why does the scarlet paintbrush lift in rueful
                                          contemplation to the sky?
We have been hiking here since dawn, and the bobolinks
have pleaded with us in a language
                                                             so mellifluous
we’ve had no choice but to take on faith its splendor.
We are the imperfect ones, it seems.
                                            Wading through bluestem.
Wading past the rosinweed and iris.
Our thoughts hovering with the wind-sweep of the
                                                                kestrel.
And truth—which manages just fine without us—
rolls out as summer sunlight on
                                                               the land.

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