THE CAR THAT BROUGHT YOU HERE STILL RUNS

                                                   (Richard Hugo—From Degrees of Gray
                                                               in Philipsburg)

It takes more than gasoline and gumption
to get you to Zortman—more
than whimsy or a wild inkling
to rekindle history. It takes a primal prairie
need, a kinship with Old Man Winter, with Napi
hunkering in sunless gulches, a longing
for short Fourth of July parades, the best-
kept-secret-café with a waitress
who commutes 50 miles from Malta—
big city with its 5 p.m. rush minute,
she quips. What can anyone say in words
that Charles Marion Russell has not
narrated in paint. Little Rockies, Larb Hills,
predator versus prey versus wind
still give this Indian-cowboy
landscape its animation.
                                  Your three eggs
jiggling over-easy, hash browns crisp,
rough-cut slabs of bone-in ham,
one pancake seat-cushioned over its own plate
make you wish you’d packed
your camera’s wide-angle lens. Panned
first, then filtered, the coffee is
as impasto-thick as the décor—
local art collaged in barnwood frames
above faux-brick wainscoting.
                                         Lucky—
the 11 a.m. lull all to yourselves—
you are, for once, simply where you need
to be. Do not ponder why. Do not
ask the waitress what brought her here
from Seattle. The wall clock is not
locked in neutral. Thus, you better be
willing to revel in this living limbo,
this muffling of drumroll death.
                                           Muse
over your food. Ruminate,
while chewing, on each tooth’s name—
incisor, canine, bicuspid, molar—
salute the taste buds, bitter to sweet,
as you clean your plate, pony up,
inch your way out of town
with a groan—heartstrings taut
as lariats stretched to whatever rogue
lodestar pulled you into this
still-shot of Montana past, grass
ropes strained to their organic max,
aching to hold for only so long.