A Place Called Alice

A Place Called Alice

My celebration of  life on the North Dakota Prairie

As one of the very first “baby boomers"I  grew up in  a little prairie town, that, like a lot of prairie towns, is mostly gone anymore. It was a time before “God” got put into the Pledge of Allegiance,  a time when portraits of Washington and Lincoln, and a copy of  the Ten Commandments in gothic script had an honored presence on the walls at school, and World War II was still a part of the short term memory. 

Kids today would more than likely say our lives were boring. Our bicycles only had one speed, baseball bats were made of wood, and you had to check and see that no one else was on the line when you used the telephone that stuck up off the desk like in a 1930’s movie. 

I guess I never realized how unsophisticated we were, we were like  a Norman Rockwell painting and to tell the honest truth

I miss it.

My writing, the telling of the stories of my memories of small town North Dakota in free, and admittedly unsophisticated verse, has been described as nostalgic narrative because from my memory to my heart to A Place Called Alice, is…


A Journey of No Distance

 

Though I am alone

and far from there

I have them with me still

those things I love.


The Winter nights.


The Northern Lights.


Summer’s yellow green


the amber gold of fall.


And quiet.


Quiet so quiet

almost I feel

I am an interloper

in a foreign land.


When the crystal shard of a Meadowlark at song,

serves it seems,

only to define the silence.


When the haunting call of an austral bound Canada Goose

vibrates the very ashes of my bones.


And wind.


Wind that prowls a winter night.

Wind for whom power lines

like harp strings tightly strung

resonate in sympathy.

Wind that whispers

through the thigh high grass

in a reflection of itself.


Though I am alone

and far from there

I have them with me still

those things I love

because you see

it is a journey of no distance

from my memory to my heart.