“Crossing the Plains”

 
Long day on day, and longer week on week,
      Across vast prairies, lit by cloud or sky
      Caught in some wild flower’s pink or violet eye,
Winds on the weary train. Patient and meek,
The stumbling oxen go; on desert’s bleak
     And scorched, some worn-out horse is left to lie
     Awhile, abandoned, suffering—then to die,
With vultures poised above. The mountains reek
With coolness, but below the plains stretch white
     And hot. Illness, hunger, thirst, doubt, despair,
     Know they; yet struggle on ‘twixt hopes and sighs,
Until, at last, from some far western height,
     Through lips of dawn bursts, like a passionate prayer,
     The blue Pacific ‘neath their blood-veined eyes.

A clipping of the poem printed in West Shore magazine, courtesy of the Ella Higginson Papers, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, Heritage Resources, Western Washington University, Bellingham Washington