DRIVING WEST FROM MILK RIVER
Blue, a ragged stripe of blue
in the far distance and a cord of road
hauling me towards it, a tumbledown
house by a dried-up marsh, no other home,
the sun spreadeagled across the stubble,
blue teeth in the sky’s mouth, a coyote
bounding the highway, no other journey,
always blue, its gravity, its lightness, turning
slowly into mountains, thin grass disturbed
by peals of wind, a dozen black cattle
near a waterhole below a yellow slope
browsing what they can, no other life
and the blue rising closer, waiting to grasp
whatever offering I am.
By Mark Abley, from The Tongues of Earth (Coteau Books, 2015)
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