Land Colic

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Indian Apple leaves a remarkable down

on the prairie, so unlike anything

from the Volga grasslands to

the basalt columns hemming Ireland,

that all similes are rendered null and void.

A buffalo needs two shots

through the lungs to be brought down.

Imagine the surveyor’s staccato cry —

caught in a wave pressed into igneous slab:

the earth’s colicky sobs.

Northwest running meridians

and east–west base lines with corner markers

made to be lost or obliterated if not chiseled deep

into the vernacular rock.