The Things I Don't Know About Nebraska

Note: I hope I got my facts right here - Kevin

The Things I Don't Know About Nebraska

The things I don't know about 
the state of Nebraska
are deep enough to fill a box
with pages of discarded poems,
meandering and more winding
than the Platte River
running through the Plains

but when wandering the maps,
running fingers over the flat lands
of corn country, what I wonder most:
who carved out the corner and
gave the empty container
to Colorado, and why?

In my mind, I imagine scenes
of resistance, the fight of it,
the proud Nebraskans
waving pitchforks and rifles
at these greedy neighbors,
the grabby ones who carved up
the land in spite of it

or I see incompetent bureaucrats,
unable to discern lines through
wind and water,
and calling it a day before the day
could even begin,
checkmarks in the box, filed away
with right, angles, wrong

and it's been said, so I've read,
how some of those who live
in the northern panhandle today
like to dip toes on the border lines
one way, to call it the West,
and others, the other way,
to call it Midwest,

while the most Nebraskans of all
just carry on, finding strength
in the solitude and in silence
of their beloved land,
bordered only by its beauty,
calling it ... home