In August one year,
we were drinking wine,
in a State Park in Kansas
watching the afternoon
walk away toward the Missouri River
and Saint Joe.
We were listening to Johnny Cash on
my cellular phone.
You – in your Miami Beach T-shirt,
and me – in my ‘Virginia is for Lovers’ sweatshirt.
We tied one on —
in the neatly trimmed grass of a
picnic area —
named for a long departed
native American, a guy
who had roamed the plains
and hunted there
and produced offspring there
and had no idea
that there would be a recreation area
and a campground
named after him one day.

And later we lay on our backs,
with the sound of a
flat-lands waterfall gurgling
somewhere in the distance
and the sound of a honey bee

hovering

pulling nectar from
a flower
that you could not identify.
You said that
you could consult your
Kansas State University
botany book
for a read on the plant,
but I remind you that you left that book
at the Rodeway Inn in Salina three days
ago.

We drink more of Kansas and talk about bees.
I tell her about the natives who came over
from Asia and how they walked across
the ice bridge. And how they trekked
across the continent
with travois sleds pulled by dogs.

Twilight – we find ourselves on our backs
watching a jet streak by overhead.

It’s late in the day and we know it is bound
for Philly, or New York,

or Boston.

Eastbound at night I tell her.
Westbound in the morning she says.