Z-BAR RETURN

I came back to Z-Bar—

Back to Spring Hills again

I came back even though—

I’d never left in the first place

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It was no great disaster—

Nothing unnatural or weird

It was like returning home—

And a road back to myself

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The worst snow and freeze-up—

In Kansas for fifty years

I picked over the apples—

My Victorians and Bramleys

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The gladioli bulbs hibernating—

Spring Hills my calm oasis

I listened to the house—

Listened to Louisa's absence

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Her troubled trespassings—

How I regretted her chagrin

Living room a choice chamber—

For entertaining cattle barons

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My patient dealings with them—

My Cattlemen colleagues

My ratty Victorian stuffed chair—

The expensive Persian rugs 

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It was all waiting only for me—

My nineteenth-century kingdom

I’d hardly disturbed its oldness—

Listening under the prairie stars

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Under the Renaissance roof—

Ensconced in tune with the Prairie  

The Mansion so lonely for so long—

So newly precious to me even now

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Sweet with quiet loneliness—

The sun sinking behind the hills

The view of the Flint Hills—

The graveyard of my gnarly dreams

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I didn’t care anymore about anything—

I just wanted to live alone there

But I'd already lost everything—

My Cattleman's dream growing dark

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I was finally home at last I guess—

Sitting on a wall on Cottonwood Street

Watching all the cars drive by—
Strong City and Cottonwood Falls