Indian maidens danced in the starlight,
in South Dakota days that are no more.

Yet happy days of life transcend the sad,
as waking hours exceed those of night.

Deep in our days — remembered flavors —
when summer days are golden, perfumed

by a thousand flowers heavy on the breeze.
Beauties of snowfalls, bracing winter days,

the gifts of precious days — gold-white days —
lost somehow in dreams of ever-longer days.

Deep-grounded wells of hope, the only wells
of sure supply in days of prairie droughts —

of days laboring in fields of wheat and hay,
old dreams of days gone by, of sunnier hours

when days were long, till lost births and hopes
— winters’ sterile days, those duller winter days

that pass, as they always do, painted with cloud-
covered shadows of grey — till soft spring skies

bear us up — again — through warm, leafy trees.
Yet, our souls are stark, starved upon careless

lees of days — lost lonely days of lowly pride.
On some great Days of Days — above the moss —

life is full — with days gone by on dancing feet.
Then, on through noble frontier days, through

days to come, in remembrance of dear days
gone by. We hear darker days soft whispering

without purpose, days of work lacking zest.
Deliver us from oft, inconsequential days —

when we go down each day hungry, filled
with keenest thoughts and sharpest phase.

Let us remember all our days, the tall red
grasses on smoky hills — and golden glows

against purple, dusk-sweet haze, rising up
from fragile, forlorn cups burned, upturned.

Days of endless rains make our hillside farms
thick as swamp. So we stomp, rave and roar!

Still, better days are in store — unvaulted times
full of endless space — forever, unencumbered.

. . . . .

Found poem by Susan Powers Bourne sourced
from word search ‘days’ in Prairie Poets, 1959
and Women.Poets | South.Dakota