A Prairie’s Soliloquy: a #writephoto #haibun (10/13/2018)

writephoto-11-oct

I am the desert wearing withered grass. You have sought to tame me time and again. Bring your livestock to graze. Clear my native flora for your wheat fields. And time and again, I have proven how wild I remain. The scouring winds delight to play across my arid beard, and see how they raze your precious crop to the ground. Devouring locust blot out the sun before descending upon the fruit of your labor. And always, always the long, dry seasons that parch the earth upon which your fortune depends.

Behold the fruit of your folly. Perhaps one of your heifers strayed from the heard. Maybe the wind carried its pitiful cries away. It must have known, in its instictual way, that its end would soon come. Now, its skull testifies against you.

I am the grasslands, the desert wearing withered grass. No matter what success you enjoyed, you have never tamed me.

You never will.

gathered clouds

bright against the ground

off-white bone

for Sue Vincent’s Thursday photo prompt: Bone #writephoto