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Montana Song
What a woman becomes is one thing.
What a girl learns—in any land—
is how to be part of something—
more than brutal winters
and a certain cruelty towards animals
raised for slaughter,
more than the crazed rabbits
squashed under the car wheels
every night driving home.
When I couldn’t join that land,
I was left with its longing—
a distance holding only itself
almost to the horizon.
But stopping, stopping at the mountains
before a person can’t bear it.
I hold a preference for the plain.
I know the regret of wealth
unused.
If I buried the girl,
the woman lives with a limb missing,
feeling the space.
For once impervious
to ticks and spotted fever,
I yearn for grey-green sage,
able to let its fur, its spice
come through, able to touch, smell,
able.
Previously published in Not As You Once Imagined, Trask House Books, 1993.
Return to Volume 1.5
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