I sometimes go back to the beginning,
\nto the Sandhills
\nwhere I was born,
\nwild expanses of Nebraska prairie
\nwhere I don’t have to speak.
\nWhere no one is left of those
\nwho had known my name.
\nThere is a windmill
\nand the ruins of a sod house
\non the far hill,
\nI played there as a child,
\nnot knowing that it was
\nto my grandfather
\nwhat his house was to me.
\nThe road is long gone now,
\nwashed down into the valley,
\nbeing sand,
\nand the bricks of the soddy
\nare just lines in the dirt.
\nI park my car behind the old barn
\nnear the old Hollibaugh farm
\nand follow the old ruts.
\nFor a mile they
\nrun, weaving across
\nthe valley floor,
\npast the rusting ruins
\nof the cars my grandfather
\nbought to fill in a ditch.
\nWrecks with shot-out
\nold windows and
\nflecks of old chrome
\nleering up out of the ground
\nbeneath the cottonwood trees
\nin the dry, hot day.
\nAt last at the crest of the hill
\nthe rattle and thunk
\nof the windmill calls me
\nover the locked gate
\nand up to the tank
\nand I stop to drink from
\nthe blood of the land
\nthat flows
\nat the call of the wind.
\nThough I do not love
\ncity life and would leave if
\nI could,
\nuntil I can, which I cannot,
\nthere is a place where I can go
\nand drink and be still
\nin the haze of the prairie,
\nI know that that old mill
\nand the ruins of the house
\nwill always welcome me back
\nbecause,
\nunlike the city,
\nthe land knows you, even when you’re lost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I sometimes go back to the beginning, to the Sandhills where I was born, wild expanses of Nebraska prairie where I don’t have to speak. Where no one is left of those who had known my name. There is a windmill and the ruins of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1052,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1052"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54484"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54494,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54484\/revisions\/54494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}