Interviews with the Prairie

"Most of our difficulty with the earth lies in the effort to do what perhaps ought not to be done. Not even all the land is fit to be farmed. A good part of agriculture is to learn how to adapt one's work to nature, to fit the crop -scheme to the climate and to the soil and the facilities." – Liberty Hyde Bailey, from The Holy Earth






While it might be just as easily true that the river
  today crosses the broad canvas of the green parkway
and that it might rise up along the sidewalks
  up over edges of things that we in the city
have dared not anticipate it is the other day I think of,
  at the prairie along Lake Wingra so lush
as certainly not to make a complaint out of water.
  What of the cutting tools we brought to the work group
old loppers with long handles that set to the stem
  of the grey dogwoods and watched these short
trees fall in miniature timbers and we then stacked
  along the rutted trail which had once held fence oaks.
Well I say what of this little cove of green
  we find ourselves in this morning with brushed
spotlight of a coming sun trying peel away
  creases of the deep green underbrush of thorn
and that the bittersweet would creep unseen for years
  around the basswood and choke if it was not for us.