Liz Dobson

The mountains mold memories, but the hillsides hold histories

in these hollows, I wander with stories both ending and beginning

I reckon with man’s transience, with the

leaving, staying; growing, decaying

I wonder at the wild roses that bloom and wither on this northern prairie

The wind whips me towards a white headstone in that prairie cemetery

beneath the shadow of a worn church steeple

It stands condemned to perish as another casualty of a bygone era

refusing to recede, remaining in remembrance

I pull the persistent prairie thistles away from the original Wanderaas name

the one that forged the way for my great grandmother and her descendants

His significance was almost lost to the decay of time

and the frailty of human memory

Badgers have made homes among my family’s bones

with little regard for their former lives

The original ancestor’s farmstead now feeds a man from Missouri

but his sister’s stead survives in the strength of my family

Those descendants and I gather on the hill beneath the steeple

looking for the lilac bushes used to mark the devastating loss of a life cut short

There are three markers that bear dates spanning only one year

reminding us that dying young is a tale as old as the land itself

The northern wind whispers that life is brief 

and aging is not always absolute nor is it always kind

While I am confronted with the brevity and unfairness of life 

others face the living decay of time and memory

On his homestead not far from the watchful guard of the worn steeple

walks a cowboy forgetting how to be a cowboy

The weathered rancher begets and forgets as he watches

a felt-topped cattle man confidently stride across the yard

The skills, the science, the strength are all succeeded in his son

and it is through this succession that the histories survive

The son guarantees that his father’s legacy is more than 

abandoned bones for badger homes

The sky above the steeple lightens with the coming of the dawn

where some see morning, I see mourning

Some saddle up, some saddles sit

gathering cows or gathering dust

I think about the hillside that holds a multitude of lost generations

and wander how many sunsets have touched the sweetgrass covered bones

I know that the dawn of a new generation 

means the sun is setting for another

I watch as the son stands strong and the ranch remains 

with the shipment secure for at least another year.