Montana Roads Scholar

In the fall,
WATCH FOR ICE ON BRIDGE.
Along the highway that slamdunks, dropkicks,
butts and bucks your Bronco into town,
pre-war posted, shotgunned signwords warn
ROUGH ROAD NEXT 40 MILES.

Hayhills bundled into rolls
And breadloaves sunbake the eye.
This is where the Missouri headwaters backwater,
headwinds tailspin, and box elder bugs criss-cross
cottonwood, cattail, and muskrat marshes.

Along ditchbanks,
WATCH FOR FALLEN ROCK.
Limestone anticlines backslide, landslide,
sideslip, glissade, cascade, and shalepitch
into knottypole barbed fences,
aligning the dustgravelled, DEER XING horizon,
as far as the sky can see
into Big Spoon, Montana.