Beneath the 'Great Mound' a collaboration by Rob Krabbe and Rose Boehm

Do you see the flag up high?
It once fluttered against a dazzling sky
but has long been forgotten.
All that remains is the echo of its sound.
An old tattered banner celebrates
a half-finished housing development
crumbling into yesterday.

Ashen summer winds pass
over the Chihuakan burial mounds,
saluting desperate struggles.
Long past.

Torn remnants of eager lives and
forgotten dreams decay in the dirt,
aimless echoes of
ancient Indian spirits:
tenuous shuffle of desiccated
leather-strapped sandals dragged
across fields, one moccasined foot
after another on the hunt for the buffalo
that's gone... gone...

Shreds of rotting combat boots
draped over blistered feet
during a break between
struggles for God and country.

Harmonica melodies drift
into the campfire sky and fall
lightly across the plains
into a hollow where a mummified corpse
rests in peace, unaware that
his own hunting season was
long ago.

She's not alert to the voices
that boast of old conflicts
once played out
on what was sacred ground;
all she wants is a drive-through-snack
on the way home from work.

Her shining young face turns
into the summer wind and
she steps off the curb into sudden
knowing, falls like a rag doll
tossed into an ancient pile of dirt
accumulated over time
by the side of a random road.

The truck screams through the breaks,
the driver enters two worlds, his last thoughts
adding to the whisperers caught between
dream and do and forever fading there.

There is no hope for tomorrow
beneath the 'Great Mound' on the southern Illinois prairie.