A Death at Tollgate Creek: Songs of the Prairie

By Art Elser

The poems in A Death at Tollgate Creek evoke the spirit of the high plains, its sand lilies, prairie grasses, coyotes, rattlesnakes, pronghorn, thundering buffalo herds, the Cheyenne Indians who once hunted them, the ferocity of its storms, and crickets singing in the peacefulness of the prairie under a full moon. The reader is asked to imagine the fate of the homesteaders who once lived, loved, and perhaps died there and to consider the cycles of nature, birth, life, and death that is ever present. A Death at Tollgate Creek sings not only of the beauty of the prairie’s vast open spaces, its forever skies, its tawny sea of grasses, its graceful critters, but also of the struggles of man and animal to survive in its harsh and unforgiving environment. They tell of the fate of the Cheyenne, the buffalo herds, and the early settlers. And we learn of the play of a coyote pup, the speed and grace of the pronghorn, hear the coyote’s howl, the wind in the grass, the blue sky in the goose’s wings, the crickets, the meadowlark. Its songs are a hymn to the seasons of the prairie.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Art Elser
• Release date: Jan 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9780998455419

Art Elser

Art Elser retired after 20 years as an Air Force pilot and 30 as a technical writer. He has a PhD in English and taught writing for over 30 years. His poetry has been published in journals and anthologies, including Blood, Water, Wind, and Stone, Owen Wister Review, High Plains Register, The Human Touch, Science Poetry, The Avocet, Vietnam War Poetry, and A Bird in the Hand: Risk and Flight. His chapbook, We Leave the Safety of the Sea, received the Colorado Authors' League Poetry award for 2014.

Book preview

A Death at Tollgate Creek

Songs of the prairie

Published by Art Elser at Smashwords

Copyright 2017, Art Elser

All rights reserved

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ISBN-978-0-9984554-1-9

WalkerDoodle Press

Denver, CO 80220

As always to Kate —

my inspiration

and love of my life.

when I doubt

a loving creator

the meadowlark

Table of Contents

A Death at Tollgate Creek

Table of Contents

Summer

Fall

Winter

Spring

Acknowledgements

About the Author

What others say about A Death at Tollgate Creek

SUMMER

Flyover Country

From thirty thousand feet at night the glow

of city lights from DC to Boston confounds.

If each light represented only one person,

the numbers would astound. Pack too many

rats in a cage and they fight, kill, and eat

each other. How do people thrive, jammed

together like that? Why don't they go crazy?

Violent? Perhaps that’s why the evening news

in those cities is so messy.

I’d rather look down at flyover country,

the braided North Platte, emerald green

alfalfa circles, towns with grain elevators

along the railroad, a thin road to an airstrip

two miles out of town, ranches miles apart,

a field half light, half dark, a tractor pulling

the dark thread. Cattle gathered around

a stock tank in a windmill’s shadow.

The fruitful work of man in nature.

Sounds Of A Prairie Morning

Near the edge of the trail crickets