{"id":38730,"date":"2019-01-15T15:41:25","date_gmt":"2019-01-15T20:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/162.144.72.159\/~jordapq6\/?p=38730"},"modified":"2023-10-31T19:09:30","modified_gmt":"2023-10-31T19:09:30","slug":"prairie-requiem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jordanbpeterson.com\/poetry\/prairie-requiem\/","title":{"rendered":"Prairie Requiem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Saskatchewan<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In the spring<br \/>\nthe snow crystallizes and glints<br \/>\nthe sun now has some warmth<br \/>\nblack patches appear in the fields<br \/>\nthe creeks and rivers overflow their banks<br \/>\npeople say hello again to their neighbours<br \/>\neveryone a little older<br \/>\n(everyone who lives here is a little older)<br \/>\nthere are not so many children<\/p>\n<p>In the summer<br \/>\nthe air smells like wheat<br \/>\nthe wind makes waves in the fields<br \/>\nthe cicadas hum like electric wire<br \/>\nthe gophers stand like sentinels<br \/>\non the side of the roads<br \/>\nwatching the farmers in their arachnid machinery<br \/>\nfighting against fate season after season<\/p>\n<p>Everyone has left the little towns<br \/>\neach of them with their shops closed<br \/>\n1959 never ended here<br \/>\nthe last good year just wore away<br \/>\nthere is no butcher shop, no bakery, no dairy,<br \/>\nno movie theater<br \/>\neveryone watches DVDs but that is no Saturday matinee<br \/>\nfor 35 cents with popcorn and a Vico<br \/>\nthere is no more railway line<br \/>\nno lonesome whistle<br \/>\nthe grain elevators vanished<br \/>\nwith the spirit of the place<\/p>\n<p>whose country is this, anyway, where such things could happen?<br \/>\nby whose will did this all disappear?<br \/>\nwas no one watching?<\/p>\n<p>the Chinese restaurant miraculously remains<\/p>\n<p>the small cabin<br \/>\nthat stood here<br \/>\nfalls into disrepair<br \/>\nand settles groaning into the prairie dust<br \/>\nits contents vandalized<\/p>\n<p>the cardboard insulation can now be seen<br \/>\nan entire family in three small rooms<br \/>\na log cabin<br \/>\na hundred years after the American frontier<br \/>\nwere the people who lived here rich or poor?<br \/>\nwhat was the value of the kerosene lantern at night against the darkness<br \/>\nof the eternal sky?<br \/>\nWhat is better, now, than the fire in a cast-iron stove warming feet in socks frozen by the chill air and frigid ground?<br \/>\nthere is no comfort in the absence of threat<br \/>\nbut it was backbreaking labour<br \/>\nand sentimentality comes easy from a distance<\/p>\n<p>the bright summer sun shines into the abandoned barn<br \/>\nthrough the suspended motes<br \/>\ndancing in the light<br \/>\nthere are the smells of dust and horses and hay<br \/>\na stadium for mice<br \/>\nthe door has settled into the ground and can no longer be opened<br \/>\nyou might squeeze through<br \/>\nand see the skeleton of a coyote lying in a corner of the stable<br \/>\nor maybe it was an old dog<br \/>\nthat crawled in here to die<\/p>\n<p>the iron tractor wheel that served to hold water from the pump in the yard<br \/>\nis rusted and overgrown by grass<br \/>\nthe blacksmith shop<br \/>\na little factory<br \/>\ncan barely be distinguished from the ancient granaries<br \/>\nexcept by those who knew it<br \/>\nthe caboose for winter schoolchildren has become grey with age<\/p>\n<p>while the people who built these things to last<br \/>\nturn silver<br \/>\nthey slow down<br \/>\nand then they disappear<br \/>\none by one<br \/>\nalong with this past<\/p>\n<p>In the autumn<br \/>\neveryone prays<br \/>\nthat it does not rain<br \/>\nthat it will not hail<br \/>\nthat it will not freeze<br \/>\nthat it does not snow<br \/>\nfour such miracles rarely occur together<\/p>\n<p>In the winter<br \/>\nthe snow blows snakelike like desert dust<br \/>\nover the highways<\/p>\n<p>everyone wishes that what was built<br \/>\nwould remain<br \/>\njust because something is good<br \/>\ndoes not mean it will last<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saskatchewan In the spring the snow crystallizes and glints the sun now has some warmth black patches appear in the fields the creeks and rivers overflow their banks people say hello again to their neighbours everyone a little older (everyone&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38736,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jordanbpeterson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38730"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jordanbpeterson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jordanbpeterson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jordanbpeterson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jordanbpeterson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38730"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jordanbpeterson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44927,"href":"https:\/\/www.jordanbpeterson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38730\/revisions\/44927"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jordanbpeterson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jordanbpeterson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jordanbpeterson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jordanbpeterson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}