Old Jules Country

Call it moonscape if you want,
Or UFO country.
To me, it is the turn toward home,
That half-left at mile marker 103,
Down into the dusk of Old Jules Country.
The road speeds past silhouettes
Of bare trees and hills, joined by
Windmills and billboards, silos,
And pumping rigs that pierce the earth
Drinking blood of dinosaurs and mastodons;
Silhouettes of irrigation rigs snake
Across plow-dappled fields where buffalo fed
And fell to Cheyenne arrows.
This was the home of the great southern herd,
A bison sea moving in waves across the prairie,
Where Herefords now dot the hills
And mope in feedlots.
Closer in, past Sterling, 
The houses and truckstops
Sneak the land away from old Jules
And the ghosts; the bison and Cheyenne.
The ghosts, the bones remain with the hills and trees.
The tracks endure beneath the concrete road
As it speeds toward the orange and dusky sky.