Montana

by Anne Babson

 

Montana! Apple covered in caramel!
Fall colors find me missing your buffalo!
            Oh! Fishing bony rainbow trout from
            Your rivers vanquishes office gossip!

Montana! Down-stuffed comforter winterland!
Sub-zero temperatures in early March
            Drive city sojourners off homesteads,
            All of your charity hibernating.

Montana! When you thaw, your antelope dart
Through underbrush and lock antlers, copulate
            And graze while grizzly bears slap salmon
            Onto your broad banks of lime alfalfa.

Montana! You preen greenest in summertime,
Your cattle ranchers dude it up in cocked hats,
            Your women flex their muscles under
            Heavyweight boxing match puff-gloved moonlight.

Montana! I sit in my desk chair typing,
Your seasons so alien to urbanites
            Hypnotize me from afar. New York
            Underground poetry scenes hunch, humbled.

Montana! Rescue me from my Metrocard!
Mutton farms! Rescue me from my career path!
            Blizzard white! Rescue me from myself!
            Brutal state! Whitewater raft me back home!

 
 

Anne Babson’s prize-winning collection “The White Trash Pantheon” was published this year by Vox Press. Her poems have appeared in journals on five continents. She is the librettist for two operas, with performances slated for next year in Boston and Montreal and 2017 in the San Francisco Bay Area.