South Dakota: Bruce Roseland
Bruce Roseland is the Poet Laureate of South Dakota, serving from 2023-2027.
Photo: Julianne Hanson
A Prairie Prayer
Here, on this arc
of grass, sun and sky,
I will stay and see if I thrive.
Others leave. They say it’s too hard.
I say hammer my spirit thin,
spread it horizon to horizon,
see if I break.
Let the blizzards hit my face;
let my skin feel the winter’s freeze;
let the heat of summer’s extreme
try to sear the flesh from my bones.
Do I have what it takes to survive,
or will I shatter and break?
Hammer me thin,
stretch me from horizon to horizon.
I need to know the character
that lies within.
I want to touch a little further
beyond my reach,
for the something that I seek.
Only then let my spirit be released.
Courtesy of Bruce Roseland.
“A Prairie Prayer,” The Cattle Business Weekly, Phillips, South Dakota, May, 2022.
“A Prairie Prayer,” South Dakota in Poems, edited by Christine Stewart-Nunez, South Dakota State Poetry Society, 2020, p. 85.
“A Prairie Prayer,” in A Prairie Prayer (Gold Metal Winner of the Will Rogers Medallion in Western Poetry), North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies, North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota, 2008, p. 1.
Featured Sound:
"Núna" | Sinrandi| Courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
"At the Crossroads" | Emanuel Wilde | Courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
”The Adjuster” | American Legion | Courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
”South Dakota Farmers Union Women's Conference on the Crisis in Rural America” | South Dakota State University Archive | openprairie.sdstate.edu/sd_farmers_union_recordings/105
”Farm Town” | Iowa Public Television, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress) | americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-37-56n031b3
”President Reagan's Radio Address to the Nation on Farm Industry on August 17, 1985” | Courtesy Ronald Reagan Presidential Library | youtube.com/watch?v=am7YECvyXI0