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Off highway 60 near Mankato
some men pull their trucks off the road
and jump out to chase deer
through a field of corn stubble,
past a grove of jack pines,
into the open ground of hills and swales
where the once black soil hummed with
wings, hooves, everything that ever lived
in the wind and returned to the sun.
Armed with shouts and waving their arms
the young men dig deep into the roots
of what is left in this ground,
while ponies behind a fence
flare nostrils and paw the dirt.