Little Big Horn

On the escape west from the Mississippi

rolling from Belle Fourche to Lame Deer,

across Wyoming into the Black Hills,

sunflowers nodding on the road bed,

a highway so straight you could sharpen

a straight razor on its white lines. 

Crows hover in a luminous sky

feeding on stinking carrion by the roadside.

Battling the car’s third gear ever west

along the Powder River and Reno’s bivouac.

till I look down at the Little Big Horn.

Rattlesnakes roll like drunks in the switch grass.

Destiny waiting among cottonwoods filled

with Cheyenne, Sioux, Bloods and Lakota.

Real life waits back at the fort, the women

in their crinoline and the Gatling Gun

left in its box so we might move faster.

We have even crated our silver sabers.

The hair on my neck rises, heat burning the

scratchy buckskins round my groin.

This is madness, of course, a wild gamble

against all that heaven holds dear.

Elizabeth’s beautiful smile, the years to come,

one more sunrise over the mountains.

Now, spur the horse, grab the bridle

and dive into a hell of our own making.