eloquence is less easily achieved than i had thought

unaided by my words and phrases
people and lives have hurled themselves across the world,
have taken Wyoming whole continents  from the youths we so gladly
surrendered

perhaps i alone am trying to crawl back -- pulling the years over
my head like blankets on a cold night     and perhaps,
as i drag their lives through decades of carefully crafted words
i am rolling those people into dust     crumbling magnificent worlds into
a prosy experiment.

i wish for a speech so fiery that none could miss
the delicacy and power that contrived to form this place
   i wish for words that sashay through the pages as
abandoned as Louisa       as droll as Miles     as earthy as the dust in the old church 

i would have my language be frightening for we were frightened and
lusty for we did that and
coy for the girls, and brave and stupid for my team mates and i'd have the coach's snarl and
Miss Wyoming's ( mona lisa) sigh and i'd write songs with water
            which is the sound of thunder and bells and sullen silence

could there be words big enough,
i'd write of skies so immense they bent with the earth and
mountains that groaned with perpetual winter and the soft place
   from which three villages and all those farms and lives could be seen      and where someone
   took a ring from me      (one could happily infer one's whole life

    in      all       that         space!)

but how to fit all this upon a page?   or within a book?    or within a library of books    or a language?

could all those crusty pioneers and their dour women    and my father who plowed all day alone and men in
oil company pickups with no radios....
         could all those quiet cowpokes and
those girls who swing on porches and pluck at their hair and boys who    at length
quit fighting and just walk away

could they know that finally--maybe--the most is said the least way,
and only silence is as eloquent as The Country?