Month: September 2020

I am planning a trip with my father and brothers

Following the rivers north and westward from Kansas City

As Lewis and Clark once did

Traveling through Plains and Badlands and Mountains

Seeing with my own eyes

That point where civilization ends

From an Interstate Highway pull-off

 

The beauty of mountains carved by the hand of God

Or geologic time and erosion

Reshaped by man and high explosives

To form edifices of our memories

The mythology of our great leaders

Causing both awe and embarrassment

Not far away the native peoples create another tableau

Reclaiming the stones as their own

 

I put my feet and heart at the mouth of the coulee

On the edge of the Little Bighorn River

And imagine how hard it was to run breathlessly to the top of the hill

Being broken in body and spirit when overrun alongside Custer

Simultaneously, I’m bounding from cover to cover like the Crow and the Sioux

Feeling raw emotion

As the land and the white standing stones mark the vanity of

Manifest Destiny at all costs

 

I hear that Yellowstone in the springtime is gorgeous

If you don’t mind the traffic jams of bears and bison

And tourists lined up in their recreational vehicles

 

In May, the sun-chasing roads should be open

While the peaks are still blanketed white

And the rivers start to boil with snow-melt

Stampeding like the Rodeo in Cody, Wyoming

 

I just want to take it all in and

See the West that was

And never was

And never really could be

But still is the West

The one that lives in our collective memories and pulses with the heartbeat of

America