Missoula, Montana, 7 September 2017

It felt so impossible to be there again, it

Almost felt possible to return again later.
Be here now; be there later. Is that so hard?
Yes, yes it is, especially if I were to specify
Where there would be. Daughter asked how
And why they made the giant white M
On Mt. Sentinel, looming over campus.
A general explanation of form and function
Was easy enough, but no, really, how, and
No, really, why? No one has ever known.
The river ran on outside the sliding screen.
The evening air held the suggestion of myth
Or dream, of apocalypse, prematurely grey,
And not even from local fires. The world
From Portland west, from White Horse
South, down and out to Los Angeles,
The Great Plains, was one pall of ash
From the sprawl of thousands of fires.
So, we weren't actually there again, after all,
We had come to this new, dying place,
The sentinel a ghost on its own mountain
And neither it nor we would ever be so again.
It was almost bedtime and we were tired
But we decided to play a game.