Roy J. Beckemeyer of Wichita is a retired Boeing executive with degrees in aeronautical engineering from St. Louis University, Wichita State University and the University of Kansas. He and his wife have lived in Kansas for almost 50 years. He draws his poetic inspiration mostly from this place, the prairie and the people who call it home.
HOPE BY ROY J. BECKEMEYER
I could tell the story of a dusk swept with layers of dust across this flat land, of wind that dared the horizon to lift its head, a story of stars scoured dim by sand blasted against the frailest sky, a story of how we’d clung to these lines, hoping to keep them from blowing away. But I would rather speak of how we rose again, buoyed up by hope and perseverance, slapped dust from our legs and arms and wiped grit from our eyes, watched the fat cumulus clouds billowing skyward, set about wreathing this land once more in moon light and in stars. For all of history is hope - the stargazers who first named the bright patterns of stars in the sky had hope that they might make some kind of sense of the wide spectacle of the heavens by giving familiar names to its parts. We should do no less with all this Kansas sky. Look, there is a bison - that red star is his eye - and up a little higher in the sky is a teepee tilted west. And that could be Comanche, the horse that survived Little Bighorn (talk about hope), to die in peace in a Kansas pasture. Oh, we can see hope in these Kansas stars the most encouraging word in the world is hope, and these stories of hope are what we need, what we cherish, how we survive.
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