Dakota again

September 30, 1982

The mechanic who tends my car Said yeah, he was real impressed By the Black Hills, but that he'd never Drive all the way across Dakota again to get there. I understood because that Was the nowhere place I came from. It's taken thirty years to Get me back. Driving, I saw the patient look of things, The struggle to be fertile against all sense, Flat roads binding farms and scraggly towns, The ribbons all but empty under the mound of sky. And I was home. The alchemy of old young time Does gild this land for me.