In Montana the streets

are covered in ice, and we

dip into the country bar

with two nights to spend,

rolling about,  stories

and the mystery of all

those years. You were

the chef, chief lady steam

in sentences Quechua

or something unknown,

I was tired of the everyday,

cities wide, tree deprived

and no hearth-lit warm

room, instead oakwood

chairs unstained and a plate

wrapped in foil. No country,

no seasons. You slide the stage

across November, curtain

hangs, cord cotton taught.

You call this walk through

fields, so lonely, but I feel fine. 

--

I wrote the idea for this in a journal from May 29th 2007, when I was down at the farm cutting back the azaleas with the fellows.