THE BADLANDS

We’ve found Loop Road. We were lost for a while
The vastness says we are in the place we’ve only read about.
We stop on the roadside and view a thousand miles 
of glory, honor, bloodshed, and tragedy.

For a moment I want to spin in a circle. 
Animals, clouds, and oh these clouds they are whiter than snow
and the blue impossible to describe-- upside down water?
We are not the first of the day and people are hovering 
on the edge (of a vastness.)

No place to go but down I caution my husband. Heights.
But I walk where there is no one else On a hillside bison. 
The grass is green, and they look faraway small. They look at me, 
and I see their story. Their tragedy and the loss of so many. 

I share their grief.
I walk to another part of the canyon.
Where formidable mountainous, voluminous pre-historic billions of years 
of Bad Lands. They are spread over insuperable acres. It’s no surprise
the French named them THE BADLANDS.

In all directions, colors are light as a ballerina dance. 
I walk into the deep space. It’s the hottest part of the day the sun 
plays tricks turning pink to fawn shadows into canvases 
and a rattler playing its song.

ON YOUR OWN a sign spoke in these immense and deep gouges 
of smooth and tattered alluvial and volcanic ash deposits. 
The reason for the pink undertones and fantastic forms
brought by volcanoes is wind and infrequent but torrential downpours.

I climbed down a few smooth tops where many others perhaps have suffered. 
Once upon a time, the basin was wide. Horses and hunter’s trappers and Indians. 
The bottom is but a thread of white. Once it was a part of White Water River.

I can’t see Roy and Dale riding through these parts, but the real cowboy 
may have a saddlebag of money and would’ve traveled a distance 
from Deadwood or just a one-horse burg. The first 
and the last for many desperado.