Our Town
He drove east
through the stone canyon,
ducks lifting off the river,
their wings a hurried rapture.
He let the last daylight absorb into him,
felt the evening hush settle around him.
He noticed the souls of small houses,
a nesting of decipherable bones
gathered in the rolling hills,
noticed the neoned liquor stores
and hungered churches
stemming off the highway,
the sixteen squared prisons
glaring on two horizons,
noticed the guard in the white sedan
warming up his anger.
He read the bumper sticker
on the truck: “Garbage Kills Bears.”
He noticed the full gun rack in the back window.
He steadied his eyes in the graying light,
drove north over the shoulder
of the red mountain,
beyond the vast, lighted complex,
eerily empty, beyond the caved mountain fortress,
its baleful towers spiking the sky,
beyond the campuses of heaven.
He parked the car,
boarded the plane and flew west
into the steel night,
over the patterned expanse below,
touching other towns,
uneasy with the distance,
into shadows over the wintry summits of mountains
plush with moonlight and stillness.
He imagined bears resting
beneath a cover of new snow.
And beyond, a town
gleaming bright,
untouched by God.
