ISSUE 20
May 2002

Scott Edward Anderson

 

Scott Edward Anderson received the Nebraska Review Award in Poetry in 1997 and won the 1998 Larry Aldrich Emerging Poets Competition. He has poems in recent issues of Alaska Quarterly Review, Cross Connect, and Terrain, and his reviews and essays have appeared in, among other publications, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Bloomsbury Review, and the Painted Bride Quarterly. Anderson is also the author of a book of natural history titled Walks in Nature's Empire, a 1995 publication by The Countryman Press.

Osage Moon 

Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, Pawhuska, Oklahoma


The moon
is a soft pinprick
in a sky
so expansive
even Ursa
Major seems minor.
A dog barks
and ghost voices
echo down Indian song—
piercing the Osage hills.
Grasses are weather-worn
and wild; wild-
flowers lay dormant—
everything abides green days.
Besides, cold weather slants
in from the north, taking the plains,
where a few days ago
hot winds came
up from the Gulf of Mexico,
fooling the dogwood,
and fires seared the earth
the color of burnt toast.
Miles, miles of dry grass
and sky
in every direction.
And there, where bison stood
at noon, sheltered
by blackjack oak,
only shadows—
unruly apparitions,
under the Osage moon,
awaiting the culling
of their existence;
binding grasses,
four-color wildflowers,
and forbs pressed between pages,
tangled in bluestem.

 

 

 

Scott Edward Anderson: Poetry
Copyright � 2002 The Cortland Review Issue 20The Cortland Review