Heartland Communiqué

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“Hello, is Mother

at home?”

—William Stafford

“The Farm and the Great

Plains,” The Darkness

Around Us Is Deep

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Of course, you’re not home—

You’re dead and so are all

The Others who once were

So intimate and real…

Exile is Authorial—

It’s the ultimate Narrative

At least that’s what

The New York Times says…

I believe everything—

Everything I hear much

More than things I watch

On TV or in books…

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Listening to you—

Sitting in the quiet of the

Night meant more to me

Than Entertainment…

This art deco photo—

NYC overhead snapshot

Chrysler Building gargoyles

Looming down over me…

Compare that to this—

Satellite photo now of my

Mosaic boyhood so very

Fly Over State Moderne…

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Me down there somewhere—

Posing in front of ‘40s camera

Before the plains intelligentsia

My stoic KS relatives…

They were pretty smart—

A lot smarter than me now

With my baccalaureate and

Cosmopolitan quack-quack…

Their cynical faces—

More at one with their skin

Then I’d ever be because

Plains Smart is different…

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WWII changed things—

Rural life and Midwestern

Existence got globalized fast

By perpetual war economics…

Eternal war economy—

Flexing its industry loins because

The country never wanted to

Go thru another Depression…

The Westering Experience—

Mock-heroic melodramas

Cary Grant getting shot at

In a dusty Kansas cornfield…

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Better than that tho—

This other photo my father

Back from P-51 England skies

After WWII with his relatives…

Three generations—

In a single snapshot that

Captures how the West was

Really won—by Farmers…

Funny how RFD reads—

The grim genealogy in the

Faces of living breathing old

Kansas men and women…

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Just a snapshot that’s all—

Back when a picture was

Worth a thousand words

Before info-glut kicked in…

And there they were—

And there they are and

There I am tonight meditating

On this communiqué thing…

What to make of it—

Other than the Midwest is

That part of me that still

Speaks in the middle of Night