. . . two lane blacktop across the roiling prairie . . . low hung clouds . . . modest houses, well kept on small lots . . . dry ditches filled with tumbleweeds . . . Pony Express through the far northeastern corner of the state . . . miles without trees . . . converging lights on final approach . . . frog strangler . . . silos and train tracks marking the entrance to town . . . center pivot sprinklers creeping around fields in big circles on heavy, treaded tires, sucking up water tens of thousands of years old from the Ogalla Aquifer, snow melt from the ice ages . . . thick cloak of beets overhanging the town in earthen richness while the harvest lasts . . . pulsing static underlain with layers of dialog and music . . . adobe "Spanish towns" pushed past the edge of town . . . bald eagles wintering along the South Platte . . . sliding through turns in the dirt . . . relentless heatwave . . . feedlots upwind . . . fading storefronts . . . battered pickup lurching from the dirt road . . . distant lights . . . rooster tail plumes following the car, fine sand filtering through into the trunk . . . the smell of money . . . Buffalo Commons . . . old brick homes on downtown lots with large trees . . . Dust Bowl storms blackening the sky, burying crops and roads . . . winter wheat greening up through the rich earth . . . cattle carriers racing down highways, fresh shit spattered across the length, rocking the living cargo . . . limp mouse or vole hanging from the telephone wire in the clasp of a small falcon's claw . . . heavy cottonwood limbs falling into sandy riverbottoms . . . washboard like to tear out your shocks . . . perfect tripartite mirrored skeleton . . . deep iris blue above, paling to the horizon that surrounds the brown, umber, dunstrawtawn sienna.