SAINT JULIAN PRESS

Ron Starbuck ~ Poet

PARADISE CREEK
Psalm 1:3     Beátus vir, qui non abiit
3 They are like trees planted by streams of water,
    bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither;
         everything they do shall prosper
​Once the Tallgrass Prairie grew high
Along the banks of Paradise Creek
Where the prairie waters offered
A symphony of flowing songs 
Running easy across wise stones
That remembered each rainfall
Held gently and sonorous through 
Lingering ages of earth and wind
Where cottonwoods and willow
Composed dreams from the music
Arising in a chorus of new psalms  
Blessed by a landscape rich and
Abundant with Whitetail Deer 
Beaver antelope elk bison coyote
Roaming across windblown savannahs
Where an indigenous people
The Cheyenne and Arapaho
The Comanche and Kiowa
Once hunted among hills and valleys
Throughout the Southern Plains
For generations before immigrant
Feet seeking their own liberation
Travelled westward across America
​Bringing Methodist Presbyterian 
Catholic and Lutheran kin 
From afar to settle in this corner 
Of the Smokey Hills — arriving 
With the railway in the 1880s
They named Natoma Kansas
After a Native American worker
Whose name means New–Born
And so — an agricultural
Society of farms and ranches
Was given birth and rose beside
Stream and creek flowing into 
The Saline and Smokey Hill Rivers
Sculpting the vales and leas in 
Fertile tones of laurel umber and sienna 
To merge with the Solomon and Republican
Rivers enthralled to the Kaw River
In a fluid current down to the Big Muddy
Then to the vast Mississippi River
Mother to a nation of builders
Curving south toward Baton Rouge
New Orleans and an ocean 
Of blue promises and mirrored stars
Picture
Natoma United Methodist Church — Natoma, Kansas
Picture
Solomon River Water Fall — Minneapolis, Kansas
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 Saint Julian Press, Inc. * Houston, TX 77008  *  Ron Starbuck ~ Publisher-CEO
 Email: ronstarbuck@saintjulianpress.com * Web: www.saintjulianpress.com