Woods That Cape Breton Doesn’t Know

Woods That Cape Breton Doesn’t Know

(after Elizabeth Bishop)

Sunday morning.

Once the bus rolls past Guymon,

trailing a plume

of blue-gray exhaust that follows

along like a stray dog,

there’s nothing—you’re inside

the handle of the pan.

Not a single white-clad steeple

can be seen anywhere

across this landscape.

As you reach more nothing,

you enter a flat forest of scrub

the locals called blackjack oak

when there were locals here.

Locals now are comprised

of one lone hawk

circling a mouse, and a rattlesnake

waiting for the hawk to decide.

Mesquite trees fill the holes

between the oaks,

creating a maze of sage and

rough dark bark that’s impossible

to penetrate. An ugly view to those

who weren’t born with a little antelope bone

in their blood.

Three riders sit on the Greyhound

as it grinds the road into eventual powder

with its up and down swaying over

undulations and dips, each rider in his own

seat far apart from each other.

No one speaks.

Humanity shared is an intrusion into misery.

Two are asleep. One is snapping soon-to-be-deleted

pictures out the window Beyond the curve

of the horizon, a wisp of smoke—

An invisible house made from adobe 

where a woman must be rendering fat.

Settlers once lived there.

The woman is thin but stout. her fierce brown hair

worn in a tight bun. The husband is making

a dust storm rise behind a mule. Two children

do laundry in a tub and splash each other.

The perfect picture of life on the prairie and just

out of reach of recreation.

It’s a lonesome business traveling into country

where no one wants to be. The sleepers try to dream

the days away.

The bus’s brakes sigh. Wakes them.

The entrance to New Mexico. One sleepy rider

stumbles down the steps. Digs in the underbelly

for his luggage. Finds it. Sits on it to wait

for his next ride. Two more hours

until the store. Then four more to Taos.

A place situated in the same place it’s been

for years.

The picture taker snaps another picture.