I raise my baton,
a rake, a half-chewed stick:
dry leaves crackle, snap
tympani for the horn toot
of geese flying south.
Paired wings overhead
wind instruments
playing a downbeat of air,
I listen to the hushed prayer.
Diane Wilson , a Dakota writer, has published a memoir, Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past, which won a 2006 Minnesota Book Award and appeared in the 2012 One Minneapolis, One Read program, and Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life. She was a 2013 Bush Fellow and 2018 AARP/Pollen Fifty Over Fifty honoree. Diane’s latest novel, The Seed Keeper, won the 2022 Minnesota Book Award for Novel & Short Story.