Some context might be good. My career was in the cattle business, I was a rancher. One of my first jobs (I was 18) was a brief stint in northeast Colorado, which is arid, dry-grass prairie. The ranches are huge, the towns few and far between. This is an impression of my experience, written long ago.

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Rolling flint hills, prairie grass, 

a panorama of earth and sky so vast 

that rust-still windmills, loafing cattle, 

entire farms, even towns become incidental. 

Brilliant, pristine, galvanized, corrugated, 

sunlit grain bins, NASA new, 

startling against a clear-air, high-desert tableau 

of sage brush and shimmering horizon. 

Rail cars on a siding, a weathered feed store, 

a faded grain truck stopped in sharp shadow, 

a cowboy stepping from the cool of a cafe, 

squinting in the noonday sun. 

Dust hangs in still air after a pot

of bawling calves barrels down the road. 

Passing images, exposed, waiting to be released. 

Passing images to be lost, but for the artist.