piles up like snow
across the prairie,
dunes leaning against fences,
mountains of dust pushing over barns.
Joe De La Flor can’t afford to feed his cows,
can’t afford to sell them.
County Agent Dewey comes,
takes the cows behind the barn,
and shoots them.
Too hard to
watch their lungs clog with dust,
like our chickens, suffocated.
Better to let the government take them,
than suffer the sight of their bony hides
sinking down
into the earth.
Joe De La Flor
rides the range.
Come spring he’ll gather Russian thistle,
pulling the plant while it’s still green and young,
before the prickles form, before it breaks free
to tumble across the plains.
He gathers thistle to feed what’s left of his cattle,
his bone-thin cattle,
cattle he drives away from the dried-up Beaver River,
to where the Cimarron still runs,
pushing the herd across the breaks,
where they might last another week, maybe two,
until it
rains.
January 1935