Poem in Your Pocket 2022: "Nebraska"

As fires raged around our community in the fall of 2018, and people found out we were heading to Nebraska, the most common question I received was "Why Nebraska?" Isn't it just corn and tornadoes? Although stereotypes might (sometimes) be based in truth, although we have yet to experience a full-blown tornado since arriving--just a couple of warnings, this place is starting to grow on me. I spent my last two years of high school in the Midwest, and I like it. True, I miss the mountains, and I miss the beach, too. There's just something about the skies here, though.

Lately I've been trying to explore some of the literary history and poetic experience here in the state of
Nebraska. What I am finding is encouraging. So as I have searched for a poem for today, I wanted to find something that represents part of my experience with the cornhusker state. Side note: I still have not converted to Big Red.

A recent favorite, as witnessed by last year's post, is Ted Kooser. However, I decided to find something newer, a poet I had not read before. In Nebraska Presence: An Anthology of Poetry, edited by Greg Kosmicki and Mark K. Stillwell, I unearthed many gems, but I ultimately decided to go with "Nebraska" by Kelly Madigan Erlandson.

“Nebraska”

This is a place for things that take time. Long histories
that need to be unrolled and laid out across oak library tables,
with a hard-backed book set on each corner to keep them pressed open.
Here, we understand that shadows fold their wings and settle down
in midday, tucked underfoot like a coyote den the unschooled never
notice. We can see a fire in the next county, the smoke a thundercloud
of blackbirds twirling for fall, grouping and regrouping themselves
as though to remember something already lost, washed out
and splayed in the wet clay of the creek bed. You can drive
an entire afternoon here and not see a person, but all the way
the meadowlarks will be opening the doors of their throats,
letting out music like milkweed seeds delivered downwind.
You might start counting those birds after awhile, picture them
as mile markers on the telephone wires, wondering if you’ve seen
the same one over and over again. We have more stars here, so many
that strangers think there is something wrong with our sky, that it’s
fake or that Sioux women have beaded our night with constellations
not seen in Minneapolis or Memphis, fresh ones that we can give
names to as we lie on the hood of the car. We can call one Mountain
Lion Reclaims Ancestral Home, after the cougar who roamed up
a wooded thicket into Omaha this fall, ranging until the zoo director
shot him with a tranquilizer dart. Here we can keep naming star puzzles
until the threat of sunrise blues the black space above us.
This is a place for things that take time, the long stitching together
of soft spots in the heart, the wind across the Missouri River Valley
scooping loess into hills unlike any others on this continent,
seeds stored in the cellar of the prairie for a hundred years
patient for fire, unable to crack themselves open without it.
This is a place where disappointments deep as aquifer
can spill themselves out, fill up and empty again, as many times
as the wound requires. This is a place where a person can heal,
or choose not to heal. We have both kinds.
                                                                                  --Kelly Madigan Erlandson

If you want to play along, Here are the rules:

1. Find a copy of your favorite poem...or one that tickles you fancy today...or one that actually fits in your pocket. Finding in on your phone is okay, but it's always more human if you have transcribed it yourself and fold it up and put it in your pocket.

2. Carry your chosen poem around all day, ready to be shared. Don't forget to share with me!

3. Share the poem with people (friends, neighbors, complete strangers) throughout the day.

4. Soak in the awesomeness that is poetry!

5. Check my Instagram (@joeaveragewriter), Twitter (@joeavgwriter), or Facebook for the video of this year's poem!

If you want even more fun, check out my chosen poems from years past!