By: Keith Moul

Fargo winters see drifts stack atop a snowflake.
Ignore fact in favor of illusion and lose feeling.

So after church we gather at a home, do a count
of heads and recount all present on the safe side.
Truly, tragedy in Dakota is the luck of the wind.

Danger exposes all angles of our orderly lives,
in our fields or from the sky; pragmatic lives;
routine family lives filled by chores, except for
Wednesdays at Tunney’s Cafe for fish and chips.

Plains history shadows our expectations. Talk
on Sunday offers us light; coffee black as tar oil
amps us in momentary rites for Sunday football.

We persist in aspirations, still; in our democracy;
in our part of the market in crops and stock, both
kinds; commitment to fertility long in the future;
in our children’s fulfillment, always in our minds;
perhaps in an illusory vision of Fargo as citadel,
unsupported cant or, worse, parochial foolscaps.

More coffee? Fargo spreads on pool table land,
no high overlook bastion against land approach.
But we are all adamant committed to this place.

We unite in trust is the point, not as adolescents,
but adults do we pledge to forgive our trespasses.

If prices persist next year we prolong a sacrifice.