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.