Belt

Richard Hugo

I had been on the road before. The first time
in a foreign land. Dead men lay along the side
and a woman sobbed. She offered me wine
and said one was her son. I understood
though I didn't know the tongue, a wild
gutteral grunt that turned the top soil gray.
That language was so harsh there were no trees.
I must have been ten. And I must have it wrong.
No record anywhere. No war in the world that year.

The town was strange, not like the road. Nothing
in it familiar, not even the humor, the way
the local mechanic kidded the waitress
fresh out of high school, planning her move
to Great Falls, though I knew every American word,
the good natured presumption behind the barbs,
and I knew the high school like it was mine,
main road, movie theatre, hardware, drug store,
the bored girls walking nowhere, the boys
leaving town to go fishing. And I knew here
war was where it belonged, hidden inside
like words I wanted the waitress to say.

And I wanted to call it home, to say to someone,
I lived here before. Where's Al, the grocer?
What happened to his daughter? I drove out
and the sky was livid with hawks. There were flowers
I hadn't seen coming in and the road slanted
a more charming way than it had. White pieces
of clothing left by a surveyor fluttered like flags
of surrender, and the girl I offered a ride got in.
She said, "Wherever you're headed, that's fine."