I left the city on a wide loop over highways
that flare north to Montana. The land’s carved in cutbanks,
frontage roads, sideroads without end, dead creeks
sure to eddy back to life somewhere on a map
I don’t own — all so quiet the world could be frames
in a silent movie. Snow fences stand alert to dispute
the coming burden of winter. Cafés are shuttered,
forever out-of-season. Brushfire smoke swayed in gusts
that slowed enough to leave the air a clemency
for hawks hovering wildrye and cheatgrass. Beasts foraged
in borrow ditches edged with thorns and the paling blue
of late flax. Some outlying towns were stations
of the wayward, ghost prints of dust, yet welcoming
— locals spoke friendly, if a bit warily,
as though I were but a resident who’d returned changed
from a long journey. Against the backdrop of foliage
unknown to me, I saw a woman wade the shallows
of Medicine Bow River with such a frail,
gaunt grace, she looked breakable to the touch, trees slumping
over the waters as if shouldering unbearable things.
Back in Cheyenne at dusk, a man begged for spare change.
Said he needed just a bit more to book an AMTRAK,
though he couldn’t tell me where he’d disembark,
as if uncertain the world would take him back.
His hands were crimped, perhaps still clutching shapes
of bread he’d torn for years. Returned to my hotel
some say is haunted by the specter of a murderess,
I opened my window, let a breeze in from somewhere
I’ve never been. Somewhere far beyond the still darkening city.
