Daughter of a Wandering Mother

I stepped foot onto hard-packed prairie, 

under the barbed-wire I weaved with my gun.

My dog went on steadily, 

as if we had never left, as if with the prairie we were one.

Buffalo berry bushes rubbed up against my legs

and steady, stiff grasses moved in the wind like ocean waves.

It had been two years since I had moved across a pasture

like a lone tumbleweed,

bouncing

and

moving

where the wind should will me in whatever direction and chosen speed.

For a moment I closed my eyes against the sun. She seemed the same as always.

Warm, welcoming, guiding rays.

I let my dog do the work of sweeping

across

the

prairie

painting her steady 

and artistic brushstrokes, keeping

with

and 

against

the wind.

I felt wide open land swallow me whole.

She brought me into her quietness and peace.

It felt good to be in a familiar place,

Stretching from knoll to knoll.

Though today it felt so different.

In the years since I’d been here,

I had changed.

I was someone new, in the never-changing sameness of the prairie,

I had returned re-birthed.

I had become a mother.

I pondered the newness of it, its meaning of the word,

My name only as old as the daughter who gave it to me.

As my movement pressed on,

as I swept in closer to my dog when she paused for a point,

as I felt my skin wrinkle in the sun,

as I lifted my gun to take aim to a bird,

as I reached down to my dog with her proud retrieve,

I was finally letting go of who I was before.

Sharptail in my bag, not even hoping for one more

I found myself only wanting to get back to the truck where my daughter waited,

A wandering, growing tumbleweed herself.

In my return, I pulled the bird out to show her.

We relished in our own little world together,

full of prairies and bright sunshine,

full of wild birds with detailed foot and feather.

A world where our favorite little bird dog lived forever

and we learned how to tumble along side by side,

wherever the wind should take us.

I closed my eyes to the sun once again,

I pressed my foot a little harder to the prairie.

I quietly thanked it,

for accepting my newness,

and for teaching me the importance of not coming here to be alone, 

but to bring us closer together.