highway poem
On the road and off it. In the carapace of a car that's ten years older than I and acts it. Yesterday I met an Indian Sinclair gas station owner who moved from Kirkland, WA to Dillon, MT only weeks ago. He told me that he had been everywhere in the world except three places that he still wants to go. Spending nights in another empty house. Petsitting a neurotic abused dog. An internship and odd jobs: paid in food, clothing, and change. Sometimes I spend an hour sitting and doing nothing, other times I worry that I won't get enough done or be useful enough to accomplish my purpose here. Thinking a lot about ones, twos and threes and wondering where the spiritual leg of my tripod went. I need new hiking boots. I want time to walk around at sunset and sunrise and click the shutter of my camera. Three days ago, I missed the perfect shot, a cowboy walking in the early light past the shuttered bar on Rodney St. Today I caught several good ones at the Capital Sports "stick-horse rodeo." The wind is up and down, the temperature too. I feel alternately at peace and unbearably lonely. Without fail I am a raging flame of desire, if anything, for conversational intercourse. I may live here someday, but only if the City Council reverses its 4:1 decision to pave over the walking mall. J. Gordon Edwards is dead on Divide Mountain and in 31 days we will be back in Glacier National park.