Soapbox

Bus Ride to Red Lodge Montana

I am exhausted  but I cannot let go,
cannot allow myself to sleep.
I feel as if I have to see it all,
absorb each patient rock, scrubby sage and circling hawk
as if by the act of witness I can bind it to me
and myself to it.

For surely these will be my last-ever glimpses of this place
so ancient and so newly born:
cradle and crypt of primordial bones
yet raw and aching, still smeared with the blood of its birth.

When they said "Greater Yellowstone"
I was expecting rolling grasslands and steep, conifered hills.
To my weary, eastern eyes this high desert plateau looks like
a place that is still under construction-
Welcome to Montana! Pardon our mess- we're redecorating!
The buttes ringing the horizon are just huge mounds of rock and dirt,
the winding, scrub-choked gullies leading away
are the tracks of a gargantuan bulldozer that recently pushed them here.
Their flanks are bare, raw and stinging like the knees of a bicyclist
sent tumbling across her chip-sealed roads,
random bits of brush clinging to wounded skin,
rocky bones exposed to the stretching sky.

The woman across from me has been asleep for an hour
but something makes me shake my head,
stay awake, hold on.
Foolish.
This land has existed for milllions of years before I arrived to bear witness,
will carry on for a million more without me~
yet I feel beholden to these hills,
responsible.
If theoretical physicists are correct and we do influence the universe
by our mere presence,
change the cat's destiny just by looking at it
then perhaps my aching eyes can do some good to this land.
Maybe, by paying attention, I can nudge the clouds to rain,
help trees to struggle and grow,
bison and elk and mustang to hold on against the steady progress of death.

From this dark and wind-swept morning
I reach for something strong to carry with me,
pray for something bright and good to leave behind
but I have nothing to offer but my observance-
two weary eyes to acknowledge
the creeks and dry washes, rattlesnakes and gravel,
stubborn buffalo grass and suddenly bright irrigated fields of hay
that fly past at 70 miles per hour
as the bus rattles on, heedless of my obligation,
hurrying to return me to the humid fields and round, green hills of Ohio.

Turbulent clouds part at last and light streams through,
fingers stroking the broken earth in benediction.
I rub my eyes and nod,
Amen, and amen.