Belt

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."