I heard that out west you can spot poems ambling about off the highways like antelope.
-- John Balaban
Northwest of Yellowstone
where men can tell stories for a living,
where a speeding ticket costs you ten dollars
and littering half that,
the buffalo and antelope
dot the sweeping hillsides like poems.
A friend and I Jeep-Cherokeed
the ninety miles from Bozeman
to a Helena rec-center auditorium
where the granolas were selling
"Wilderness: Yes!" bumper stickers
and nodding in groups over coffee,
and scuffing the floor with the toes
of their Vibram-soled boots.
We paid our two bucks
and waited for the show.
Walkin' Jim Stolz has hiked from
the Grand Canyon back home
to Lone Mountain, Montana,
and he straps his guitar upside down
onto the outside of his backpack.
It saved his life once,
digging like an ice axe
into the steep snowfield
he was sliding down.
He repaired it with duct tape
and uses it still to growl
out his wilderness songs.
Raphael Christy tells the stories
of Charles M. Russell
in a one-man show. In one,
an old rancher, in the process
of lighting a fresh-rolled cigarette,
spooked his horse right off a cliff.
When his buddies rode to the edge,
they found him in a treetop,
still on the horse, asking,
"Any you boys got a match?
The one I struck blowed out."
We had beers with them later,
in the Wind Bag Saloon,
swapping stories as the wind blew
in the West Montana night.