We Are Prairie

For a while we inhabit our bodies, fill them with signals of our being -- colors and scents, desires and actions, calls out into the abyss until a few find us and we become one. We are like the coneflower, a ray of inflorescence, stamens sticky with faith. We fade. We get sharp. We get stuck to whatever passes by. We're carried out into the autumn and like ghosts some part of us surfaces far away. Again and again, over and over, our shadows echo and call back to one another. Where will we bloom again. Will we ever bloom again. Or is this moment the only one and we must live it hard enough to last a hundred lifetimes. This is the prairie inside of us. We are prairie.