getting there

We leave later than planned, last minute

stop at the gas station, grocery store, 

water bottles filled, almonds and candycorn 

clutched in fists.

Facing north we start to sing - we know 

a few Halloween songs, 

wagon wheel, the circle game.

Our valley unfolds like a rumpled

bedsheet, the last stands of bright aspen,

cottonwood vibrate gold against the muted brown

of October farmland.  We follow the river north.

The wind

becomes a force like the highway itself- 

pushing back

as we move through it.

Bruised sky and sudden dash of rain 

against the windshield, the car quiets as the girls pull on 

headphones, drift off through time and space 

in a magic treehouse.

Near Deer Lodge the sky clears again,

sideways light of late afternoon turns semis

into magical beasts, each falling leaf caught

in the draft of traffic into pirates' gold.

I've been traveling these highways

all my life, they are familiar paths

to the places I love.  I have a story for 

every small town along they way; I know 

that my grandmother would order 

the grilled cheese at Trixie's Saloon

in Ovando,  I know the fishing access where my 7th grade

class stopped for lunch on a field trip,

my wonderful teacher reading us poetry as we sat beside

the Little Blackfoot.  I know the empty, rolling stretch

of highway where, at thirteen, my stepdad pulled over

and told me to switch seats with him so I could learn

to drive.

And I know the destination.  A place 

stitched into my soul- the smell

of glacial silt and lakewater, the mix

of mist and larch needles, and in October

the sound of geese

moving on.