Borrow

We borrow from the land what we can but cannot
return to it: bluestem, coneflower, boneset, broomcorn,
a ring-necked pheasant tied to a pole, a flat stretch of land
we strip and tar and pave, a creek that gets deeper
as it downrivers, its edges spoiled with runoff.
We collect seeds from the sunflowers and sow them
like quilt pieces, a little scrap of prairie rose here,
scrap of meadowlark feather there. Tamp down
the soil with plodding hooves, steel-toed boots.
Listen as the tallgrass rattles its dry stems,
cottonwood leaves quake as they remember mountain
lakes. Listen to the grain trucks rumble the highway.
We startle at the deer who startle at our footsteps.
A tree frog croaks from its harddark hole in
the otherwise empty change slot of a vending machine.

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About the Treehouse Climate Action Poem Prize

“Can I borrow a tissue? Of course, when we say borrow, we mean take. In this poem, we are reminded of that when it comes to bluestem, cottonwood, and the land itself. ‘Borrow’ is a gorgeously written, haunting meditation on what we take and cannot return. This poem is graceful in both senses of the word: elegant, but also evoking a forgiveness (grace) we have not earned but receive nonetheless if we step outside and stand in sun. In just fifteen lines, this poem also holds what we attempt to do in repair: plant, listen, observe——we borrow those moments, too. What can we return when ‘[a] tree frog croaks from its harddark hole in / the otherwise empty change slot of a vending machine’?”
——Elizabeth Bradfield and Kate Marvel

“I wrote this poem while serving as the artist in residence for Homestead National Historical Park. Only one to four percent of tallgrass prairie remains today, one hundred acres of which the park preserves. I was contemplating our relationship to the land, particularly what it means to conserve or preserve ‘public’ lands as a kind of wilderness that both does and does not remain.”
—Sarah McCartt-Jackson