Flaming orange blossoms
shouting in the meadow
sea of green and green:
“Here! Here! Here!
I am HERE!”
And, butterflies listen,
fly to and drink
from Butterfly Milkweed
with roots deep
anchoring soil
linking
air and realm below.
Clustering flames:
bright presence
unforgettable
as one walks, gazes
over lush meadows
of grass oceans.
Duane L. Herrmann
Duane L. Herrmann, internationally published, award-winning poet and historian, has work in print and on-line publications as Midwest Quarterly, Little Balkans Review, Flint Hills Review, Manifest West, Inscape, Gonzo Press, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, over one hundred other publications, over fifty anthologies, plus a sci fi novel. A fifth generation Kansan, with branches of his family here before the revolution, and a Native branch even longer, he writes from, these perspectives. His full-length collections of poetry include: Prairies of Possibilities, Ichnographical, Praise the King of Glory, No Known Address, Remnants of a Life, Family Plowing, and Zephyrs of the Heart. His poetry has received the Robert Hayden Poetry Fellowship, inclusion in American Poets of the 1990s, Map of Kansas Literature, Kansas Poets Trail, and others. This, despite an abusive childhood embellished by dyslexia, ADHD, cyclothymia, an anxiety disorder, Selective Mutism, and now, PTSD. The father of four and grandfather of seven, he was surprised to find himself on a farm in Kansas in 1951 and is still trying to make sense of that, but has grown fond of grass waving under wind, trees, and the enchantment of moonlight.