French Prairie Summer

The oak grove is still there but have the trees shrunk after thirty years eight steps from my tent to the canvas one up on a platform the propane stove I started each morning at three-thirty in St. Paul watching and waiting for the field burn now that the tenders of the open land the beaver the water in the impossibly wide valley stopped by new houses where the field school had their dig and I was the cook who sliced her fingers--seventeen stitches on a Crisco can. John McKay you are dead. What do I owe you and the St. Paul summer back then of course I fell in love with the Champoeg wheat those years ago when I fell to my knees retching.