I ride across the open grasslands
east, up from Greeley to the frontier
headed back. I pass through towns
that are no longer more than boarded

farm houses, shuttered up stores,
the empty silo of a grain elevator.
The Pawnee might have made this into
something more, these tough grass hills.

I ride through the open window
of a world where time moves back
and forth.  It’s strange to be astride
the bike at 70 mph and smelling sweat

on the roped mane of a horse.  But
there are ghosts, and then there are ghosts.
The air seems to thin into poorer shields
against an immutable universe.

I ride before the evening rhumb
is complete, a few flatbeds rolling east,
empty, as wheat fields return to prairie,
and see the quiet explode, replete

with the highway’s crumbled fortelace
before the purer forms of growth,
renegade again, grasses sweeping clear
to the border, to the reopened range.