Union Pacific: A Pantoum

by Jerome Joseph Gentes

Strange to find ourselves
in plain beautiful country
where sunlight flows at
soft distances behind you.

In plain: beautiful country,
brief showers, and broken
soft distances. Behind you
meadowlarks sail and rise

brief, unbroken. Showers
far up the ranging blue
rise and sail. Meadowlarks
on mountain lilacs ahead,

a range in blue. Farther up
there is not a tree, nothing
on mountains’ heads. Lilacs
risen sweet in great steps.

Nothing is not there. A tree
our selves find too strange,
rising in great, sweet steps
to wherever sun’s light flows.

Jerome Joseph Gentes (he/him) is a Standing Rock Lakota and registered A'aninin from the Fort Belknap Reservation, Montana. He is a writer, designer, and producer, and studied Nonfiction Writing at Columbia University. His company, TigerBear Productions, is committed to telling new stories from new voices in new ways. He was a 2012 Pushcart Prize nominee for poetry, and his writing has appeared in Fourteen Hills, Rougarou, Verbatim, Artvoice, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Buffalo News, and other venues.