There is peace in the hill country
Where the horizon,
Rolled by streams and trees,
Shuts the heart in …
Where a browsing mountain
Presses bluntly against the sky,
Admitting no dreams of the land
On its lee.
But on the plains there is no peace—
Plains—where violent clouds lie down
And lightning reaches fiery arms
To seek their calm …
Where the far smooth worldline,
Swept back by the virile winds
Beyond the trembling mirages
That suggest silvered Utopias,
Stretched the pain-wise soul
To aching point
To touch infinity.
From Told in the Seed and Selected Poems (Muse Ink Press, 2021) by Sanora Babb. Copyright © 1998 by Sanora Babb. Reprinted by permission of the literary estate of Sanora Babb.