BJZ Poems and Musings

What an incredible diversity of climates, landscapes, and bodies of water we have in North America and the US. As we traverse our country we might feel a sense of amazement and appreciation of “our land”. And yet, our 250 year history is one of the progressive march westward over this land, the displacement and destruction of indigenous peoples, reshaping the terrain, the harvest of lumber and crops, drilling for oil, mining minerals, the creation of cities, highways, power plants. With our mentality that the land is something to “be conquered” we failed to understand the fragility of ecosystems as we satiated ourselves and threw the scraps on the ground. While we were celebrating with a song like “America the Beautiful” by Irving Berlin, we were leaving our mark, often an ugly one, on our beautiful land. The poem below is a recent one I wrote after traveling to Kansas and beholding again the plains of the mid-section of our country. I was reflecting that even though we have come to dominate and decimate much of our land and environment in the last quarter millennium, it is likely that the land will have the last laugh.

Kansas

without the medley of forests and hills
blocking distant sight as in the East;
this expanse of Midwestern landscape
spreads open nearsighted eyes
and intimidates a soul
used to a good hiding place

mockingly, it sings to me –

you are a little dot on our prairie
of flesh and bones, a mercenary…
ahh, you speak, but I hear you not
as I propel the wind
that bends these grasses
shapes this soil

my sister Missouri
like an eternal snake,
winds and burrows,
casts water spells

wish you to stay – have life here?
bring your wheels and wantonness?
I am the wind, she is the water
accept and obey these truths:

you are not the land,
not the sky
not the rain;
you feign being free

this being thus
your mortal dust
we will one day
carry to the sea

Brian J. Zink May 21, 2026 Copyright rules apply