"The prairie has always been enough."
For centuries, Zen poetry has found its voice in mountain temples, bamboo groves, cherry blossoms, and quiet gardens. Those landscapes shaped some of the world's most enduring moments of attention.
I live somewhere else.
My world is northern Illinois.
It is tallgrass prairie bending beneath an autumn wind, Hall Creek moving through limestone at Wild Roots Nature Center, red-winged blackbirds calling from cattails, milkweed floating across old fence lines, abandoned farmhouses, weathered barns, gravel roads disappearing toward the horizon, and bur oaks that have watched generations pass beneath their branches.
These places deserve their own language.
I have come to call that language Prairie Zen.
It is not a school, an organization, or a doctrine.
It is simply the practice of paying complete attention to the landscapes of the American Midwest.
Rather than borrowing another culture's imagery, Prairie Zen begins where we stand.
It asks us to notice what has always been here.
power outage—
the stars resume
their old jobs
morning stillness—
a spider mends
the space between worlds
bee in the window—
I open it
for both of us
fallen pinecone—
new forest
already inside
tree stump with new shoots—
not asking permission to
begin again
not watching
the moment the deer
becomes the woods again
wind in pines—
something wiser than me
is breathing
the dawn arrives
with antlers
and no explanation
prairie wind—
my hat
becomes a pilgrim
sagebrush flat—
a copperhead
corrects my posture
wind stirs the wheat—
a deer's ear lifts
before the rest of her knows
honeybee
landing on my hand—
I let her keep it
in the clearing
dharma becomes
dragonflies
Haiku from Vanished Roads
The prairie is often mistaken for emptiness.
It is anything but.
Spend enough time walking slowly and the landscape begins to reveal itself—not through spectacle, but through accumulation.
The first pasqueflower after winter.
A hawk circling above harvested fields.
The silence that follows snowfall.
The sound of cicadas replacing birdsong in late July.
The slow return of green after fire.
These are ordinary miracles.
Prairie Zen suggests they are enough.
prairie wind—
my hat
becomes a pilgrim
burned prairie—
all that room
for green
moss—
how quickly
green forgives
deer at dusk—
her stillness
rearranges mine
blackwater creek—
the dark arriving
by fishmouths
milkweed—
the wind
opening envelopes
field mowing—
the tractor
going around something
Prairie Zen
Zen poetry has long been associated with bamboo groves, mountain temples, and cherry blossoms. Those landscapes gave voice to one tradition of paying complete attention to the living world.
The American Midwest offers another.
Its language is tallgrass prairie bending before autumn wind, oak savannas older than memory, gravel roads that disappear into the horizon, migrating birds crossing harvested fields, limestone creeks, weathered barns, and rivers carrying glaciers toward the sea.
I call this Prairie Zen.
Prairie Zen is not a religion, a movement, or an attempt to reinterpret traditional Zen. It is a literary practice rooted in observation, humility, and belonging. It asks what happens when we stop treating the Midwestern landscape as ordinary and begin seeing it with the same attention earlier poets gave to mountains, bamboo, and plum blossoms.
More broadly, it reflects what I have come to think of as Midwest Zen—a way of meeting the world shaped by open horizons, changing seasons, quiet endurance, and the understanding that beauty is often found where few people think to look.
Rather than seeking the extraordinary, Prairie Zen begins with what is already present. A hawk circling over cut corn. Milkweed opening in the wind. Moss reclaiming limestone. A creek remembering the glacier that carved it. Every landscape has its own vocabulary. Prairie Zen simply listens for ours.
The following poems span several collections, including Vanished Roads and the forthcoming Severson Dells. Together they illustrate Prairie Zen and the broader spirit of Midwest Zen—not as philosophy explained, but as attention practiced.
white oak woods—
the whole forest
breathing together
red oak—
autumn
finding another word
compass plant—
even the bees
know north
goldenrod—
the whole field
humming
weathered limestone—
moss
finding another century
morel—
kneeling
for no prayer
after the howl—
the prairie
twice as large
Hall Creek—
the long conversation
with stone