We Must Be In Montana Now

I don't know where we are but
we must be in Montana now.
Not Mountain Montana but People Montana.

If you look up you see a big sky,
but if you look straight and then around in circles
you see faces and eyes in bodies and
feet in animals trusting the earth; Montana people,
with broad, low hats to keep their eyes in shadow
and make them look low to the ground for tracking light.
Montana people would not have seen Icarus
until he was roadkill in the sunny liquid arc
of tobacco juice. That's another thing;
they chew moist, dark plants with tar in them.
That's what killed the dinosaurs in La Brea.

I don't recall ever being here before but
this must be Montana because now I see
Montana people all around me. It is said that
they are a stony people, and not a compassionate people,
who kill endangered wolves and help lambs and
calves and foals and children to be born and to die.
It is not with Montana men going alone after bear,
or Montana women riding horses hard, that
I find kinship, but with Montana people who go
calmly on under the constant threat of forest
fires, which I imagine there are a lot of here in Montana.

I didn’t know until now, until I looked into the
dispassionate faces of the other Montana people,
what it is like to live a life so longed for and
so cajoled, so near to forest fires, that the only
things keeping my feet from burning in my
smouldering boots are the tears running off
my crying face.

I don't know how we got here but
we must be in Montana now.

I think I was from here once.