The Whole World Sparks And Flames

Kristyn Harris: Carry Me Back to the Lone Prairie
2013 National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, Elko, NV.

At the time of Lewis and Clark,
setting the prairies on fire
was a well-known signal
that meant,
Come down to the water.
It was an extravagant gesture,
but we can’t do less.
If the landscape reveals
one certainty, it is that
the extravagant gesture is
the very stuff of creation.
After the extravagant gesture
of creation in the first place,
the universe has continued
to deal exclusively
in extravagances, flinging
intricacies and colossi
down aeons of emptiness,
heaping profusions
on profligacies

with ever fresh vigor.
The whole show has been
on fire from the word go.
I come down to the water
to cool my eyes.
But everywhere I look,
I see fire:
that which isn’t flint
is tinder, and
the whole world sparks and flames.
--Annie Dillard
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

...BUT NOW IT'S DISNEY'S AMERICA...