Enga mellom fjella

Smile City

Smile City

         for Lacy

         The two cowboys drove the truck to bring her back to Smile City: small coffin in a smelly fridge, a pall of rotting flesh left from roadkill someone had forgot. Times were rough and venison was free, albeit tough.

         The road flew over the fossil fields, the grasslands dry with dust. The memory of a cattle drive still hung in the air ... three generations past, but no one had forgot that Smile City once was their final destination. And now ... they were bringing her body back.

         Back when, she'd packed her heart and soul, left for university in Little Rhody. "I don't care. Anywhere but here," she'd said. She dared to leave the denizens of dust and water drips. She'd become a Brown eccentric and the road she traveled was a one-way trip. It never did go back until today, this day in June when cottonwood covered the dirt of Green Acres Road with snow.

         How could she have known that she'd never go back? She'd made her mark in the outer world by telling stories, a wordsmith renowned for images that wove through her readers thoughts. She'd taught on both coasts, become an icon in Connecticut, her adopted home. Even the outback ranchers of Smile City devoured her work.

         Once, her old teacher, Mrs. Browning, traveled to Billings to hear her speak, sign her book. She commented later she looked the same somehow, still smiles and all, but with that stout inner core, that strength she'd inherited by growing up eating dust. She'd been well brought up.

         And now she was coming home. Accident they said. So young to die before her time, age 61. They'd bury her in the family plot where all six generations mouldered in their graves, bored-to-death. They'd keep her company for eternity, beg her tell them stories of the outside world they'd never sought, glad to hear her tell them.

         She'd been the one who thought herself lucky to have left. Now driving down Route 59, the cowboys looked across the cornfields, turned into old Custer County Cemetery. The stones were patiently waiting, eager to have her back.

© 2008 Kåre Enga [165.164] 2008-07-27

Eastern Montana is a landscape of wide open spaces where the bowl of growing green or golden brown meets the unrelenting blue of sky. It is the abode of ranchers and farmers, of those who were born in the dust, work the dust and are buried under a blanket of dust, to rest through the blizzards of January and the snow of cottonwood on a blistering June day. It is not forgiving nor does it invite you to stay. Once there, you will want to leave. Brush off the dust if you must; you will never shake all of it off.

ME:

I managed to fight with the library's computers. They don't use legal size paper which is what I need to do my 'business' card. I can put 4 strips of writing (8 1/2 x 3 1/2) which when folded, stapled and cut form a mini-booklet of 8 pages. I put on a cover of card stock
and voila a business card deluxe (chose a dull light khaki green cover with ivory pages). My first? The above prose poem "Smile City". I chose it because it has a Montana theme and I'm in Montana. Not overly thrilled with a couple word choices and I just caught a typo, but I gave the first one to Amanda and Brian at Sushihana last night because last week I promised them. One goal achieved.

Today, I get to share it with Lacy! She's from Miles City and goes to Brown University. I sat down to write a poem for her friend Katherine "Always Katherine" but within a half hour had an unedited version of the above. I go with the flow. Have to.

Just met another poet at Butterfly Herbs, Phil Atkins; must read his Free in the Sapphire Mountains. I'm still reading Prageeta Sharma's book of poetry and need to start my friend Leland's novel next. I'm surrounded by writers.

Phil mentioned that Butte has an artist community as well and is cheaper than Missoula to live in. I have to consider that ... it would take me back to my ethnic blue-collar roots. Not sure I can handle that. But ... if it has a coffeehouse, writers' workshops, a cheap place to stay ...

Montana: 76º and dry at 14:44.

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