Local Lit

Looking Glass Prairie

Jessi Peterson |

We’re in the gloaming now,
the air still and replete with the day’s doings.
Cottonwoods talk amongst themselves, just the topmost branches
rustling in a breeze we can’t feel, like grownups gossiping
over the heads of children.  I wish I knew
if they were talking rain – they can see so much further
out across already darkened plains. The moon
keeps trying to foist a streetlight glow off on the prairie,
but it just glances off the big bluestem,
forms an icy crust, even in these dog days.
From the linden a mockingbird chuckles,
whistles the night in over his soft twilight wings.

Jessi Peterson is a children's librarian in Chippewa Falls. She and her husband live just north of Eau Claire in a hand-built hobbit house.