Traci Brimhall, 2023-2026 Poet Laureate of Kansas, presents a community poem inspired by Prairie Festival 2026 attendees that received the question: “How are you working to build a perennial future?”

Full poem

Perennial Futures

Like this land, I am returning to my mother tongue 

of silphium and currants to support the sonication

of the bumblebee on a patch of prairie grass. Like 

my neighbor, I am digging up bee balm and milkweed 

to share with my friends. Like my students, I am 

going outside more. Like them, I am getting more 

curious about what I love. With one part openness 

to discomfort and three parts presence in the peace 

of wild things,I am stirring gently. I am healing. I am 

bringing my best self to the joy of singing grasses. 

With one part oak and two parts farmers market, 

I am opening my heart, mind, and hands. Please 

know, like you I am letting friction into my life. 

I’m striving to be the change, saving my seeds 

and installing rain barrels. I am biking to work. 

Unlike you, I am not building a perennial polyculture 

between solar arrays, but like you I am returning 

to home soil and listening to the prairie. I am trying 

to be like the blade of grass, bent by the wind, 

attracted to the sun, grounded by the water. I am 

peeling back my layers of ignorance and looking 

more closely, transforming a green mass into 

a community of unique beings. I do not yet know 

how to build a replicable and emergent process 

methodology or find food company synergies 

for perennial ingredients. But I do know how to 

challenge human supremacy, how to stay in 

a conversation and feed my mind with honest work. 

I do know how to let the phone battery die and learn 

the names of plants, sing their songs. I can and will 

help a a box turtle cross the road. I can and will cook 

more perennial pasta. I haven’t yet but will build 

a food forest. I will try to plant an edible landscape 

of apricots and pecans, elderberries and choke cherries, 

hazelnuts and plums. Though I’m more than halfway 

through this life, I am still new to this world. Still 

learning patience and how to find the plants and people 

who give more than they need. With one part Kernza 

pancakes and three parts tenacity, I am planting babies 

in my womb and raising them into children who know 

the world by name. We love what we know, and I know 

that I am not fencing. I am letting the wildlife eat 

a portion of my garden. Like you, I am removing 

invasive and planting natives to keep carbon—

that backbone of life—in the soil. I start with a year 

of dry weather and spread a native army of cutworm 

moths, and yes, I am giving them privacy as they mate 

and lay eggs that will one day rise and eat the cheatgrass. 

Come over. I’ve missed you. Let me feed you. 

With at least one human and one idea, mixed with 

2 cups of research and 12 lbs of soil, I can grow food 

regeneratively. I can bring community into a web 

of resilience. Like you, my heart is broken and open 

and hopeful. I am planting oak trees. I am opening 

my history book again. I am listening, listening, laughing. 

Oh, I am looking into your eyes, yes, I see, the land 

will be forever green.

“The river’s injury is its shape.” —Wendell Berry