Back East: My Love Affair with Montana

Here's a little background on me. I'm from Great Falls, Montana. Although I moved when I was only three, no time to develop any real memory of the place, it has been a part of me all my life. I'm a child of the Rockies, a bonafide cowgirl, and a Wild Westerner. I can ride a horse backwards, I know how to make a cinch knot, and there has never been a time where I didn't own at least one thing reminiscent of my Midwestern roots. (If you saw my closet now, you'd notice that there are two wide brimmed hats, one of straw, another of wool, one pair of Stetson cowgirl boots, and several stuffed horses. I even wear a silver horseshoe nail ring on my right hand.)

My mother, one day last week, informed us that our grandparents were hoping we could journey the 700 mile trek from Seattle to Bozeman for a four day, three night stay to tour around. I also had hoped to see some of the campus, though the most I did eventually see was the Musuem of the Rockies - don't get me wrong though, I am not complaining at all. I got to see Big Mike...

There are also the people, who are the friendliest you could ever meet. Everyone says hi, everyone is willing to stop and have a chat with a total stranger. Twice, the group of us were invited to someone's home, the first being my mother's childhood home, and the second being my grandfather's neighbors in the Shining Mountain property. Not only were they both of them gracious, but the neighbors were thrilled to have company and give us every minute detail of their lives since they'd come to live in the Shining Mountains.

That was the most awe-inspiring part of the trip: the road trip out to the Shining Mountains. I would argue anyone, anyday, with every scrap of evidence I can muster that Montana has, by far, the most beautiful countryside in the world. Wild, craggy canyons edge the sapphire Madison River, and then you come to a cozy little town called Ennis with the zaniest people and culture - an eclectic merge of the Old West and the modern world. Beyond Ennis, is a huge valley, dusted gold from the hay and grain fields, with green bushes fringing the Madison and its tributaries coming down from the mountains. Antelope and deer are frequently dodging your gaze, and horses and cows eagerly look to the road as they yearn for friendly faces. I saw a few of my four-legged friends, a couple of quarter horses, and insisted that my mother stop along a road outside Ennis to say hi, petting them and sweet-talking them as they nibbled the corners of my shirt and nudged heads with me. And my favorite part of the scenery is the copious amounts of wild sunflowers. They aren't the big, honking dinner plate sized ones with stems the diameter of your pinkie: they are like any other flower, dainty and adorable, and they are so numerous that you could pick enough for a wedding party, and you wouldn't make a dent in them. I absolutely adore that they grow wild here.

When we got to my grandparents' property out there in the Shining Mountains, the sun was high above us, and the wind sang a song of greeting, so exuberant that my hat was prone to flying off. Golden eagles circled the valley below, and the peace of it all was the most striking thing I've ever felt. Far beyond the reaches of civilization, I could really feel myself falling in love with it all. I could see myself, ten years in the future, with a property like the one my grandfather owns, with a little cabin, a barn, and a few horses of my own, and a life in Bozeman. You could say that my heart has been set on Montana, thoroughly and finally.

In the end, I thought it only fair that I write about it, in hopes that you could understand my plight. You've heard of my ready disdain for western Washington, and this should be a heavy indicator as to where that comes from. I thought about scratching out a poem for you all, but I didn't think that would be fair, as it would be forced and quickly thrown out. Pray for me that next week, I'll have something more organized, and that some distant relative doesn't call me away again.

Lust: the Drive to Be Touchy-Feely

This is the article that I post where I'm taking a big chance, because I am going to be tackling one of those weird things that make us human that not many people are very open about. (There is also the issue that there are several people out there who I would be mortified to have read this, but I'm going to take that chance anyways.) But let's face it: everyone at one point or another has lusted after someone else.

I had just got done with one of those weird episodes of panting after someone one quite possibly was never going to have anyways, more abruptly than usual because the object of my affections was skipping state. It's sad, but in this case, I realize that it is better that it happens that way, or at least, that's what I'm trying to tell myself. It was a bad case: one where you get crazy dreams that wake you up in the night, and you are acutely aware of the fact that you are sleeping alone, that make you you wish you hadn't woken up because of how wonderful everything was going inside your sub-conscience, and that make you realize how very hopeless everything in reality is shaping up to be.It was one where you'd find yourself drifting off into space, picturing the many ways how an encounter between one and one's intended could go. In the case of a poet, like me, it often inspires a veritable slough of bad poetry (okay, in my defense, I'm a damn good writer, so they aren't that bad).

You must understand too, that I am one who does not ever find excessive emotions appealing or a source of strength. I have been accused of being cold, of being an ice queen, and it is because I view sappy, mushy-gushy feelings as a way of being vulnerable. I have struggled on many occasion with letting myself be vulnerable. Even with the object of my affections those few months, I did not let myself appear what I would consider to be weak. In this poem, I open up my weaker, more emotional side, in hopes that I can learn to be warmer.

Heat
It's hot out.
It feels like a sauna out on the street, though there are
no old people here, not like at the spa - they do love to flock there.
I'm near-panting, hosing down the roses, and the water comes off,
aromatic steam that perfumes the air with an amatory scent.
I would really love to jump in a pool, crystalline and cool and--
there, I see you walking.

I'm amazed at your attire, your choice of pants: black shorts.
I know you are from the South; you've been acclimated to warmer places,
but how are you comfortable?
And then I feel the heat of my body's response, and, oh dear God,
I am all the more fevered.

Hot, hot, hot, and I'm sweating.
How those shorts fall along all the right places, trailing over your sinew,
detailing the lean lines beneath.
I'd love to strip them off of you, and have you here,
peeling off my tank top that sticks and sticks like Saran Wrap
to my sun-kissed skin, smelling of steaming rose petals.

And I dream of you, drawing the pine green fabric over my brow,
laden heavy with perspiration,
to have you gaze on me with dark, smokey intent.
All the curses, all the blessings, everything I could say to you,
they stay bubbling in my larynx,
champagne, my preferred poison on a swelter-day
 (Sirius, you beautiful orb, you bring such odd luck with your humid rising).
I curse your power over me, for it is likely that you,
you who bring these scathing dreams to me,
will have such an intent, but not for shy, timid me.
Still, I can hope that one of these dog days,
you'll draw me close to share your heat,
draw me to your hard, hot chest and give me
one
      frenzied
                  kiss.

The Importance of Being Patient

Getting engaged at a young age in our generation is never a good idea. It might seem like a romantic idea at the time, but we young adults of the twenty-first century are too involved with our ambitions and our romantic notions of finding ourselves to truly desire binding ourselves to someone at such young ages. There are, of course exceptions to that rule, like everything, but, needless to say, I was reckless and failed to hinder this advice: I got engaged a week before my twentieth birthday. In two weeks, it shall have been the anniversary of that day, and I can't say it was a day of good decisions. I was too young - I had too many plans for myself and too many things on my bucket list to complete that a fiance or, God forbid, a husband would have gotten in the way of. I still am too young. Three months later, a month after ending the relationship (it had been an awful, rocky, turbulent engagement that I never expected, yet should have seen coming), I wrote this as a tribute to the end of what must have been the most exhausting time of my life.

A Pyre for "Us"
It's three months yesterday since I gave you
my incensed adieu - I crossed the street, walked away from your pleas,
the same street where some hag clipped your arm and tumbled you into the concrete
 - does that say something? Infer something, a difference between us?
There is a bitter irony in my heart that laughs in the nooks and cockles of my soul.
It has not escaped my well-trained attentions, those which you so willfully dismissed
as follies, as excessive.

Three months, and Ms. Jones sings "turn me on," the tune of my heart.
She wails in the cafe, and it's true.
I'm in need for male company, aching for something you tried to give,
but, for lack of something more sizable, more sumptuous and tempting,
you could not.

Romantic notions came, but your attending to tragedy
(you were always searching for Juliet or Cleopatra, when you could never
be satisfied with my Olivia, my Katarina) kept you, hindered us.
I need a man with wry smile, dirty intention, and in need of laughter, instead of a torrent.
I want passion, fury; I wish to be desired - seduction that I cannot stave off.
Where is he that can make me mad with thought of him in the dead
of slumber-less nights?
I cannot see him.
"Where are you, Petruchio?"

Living in Western Washington...as far as finding a decent man goes, it sucks.

When you were raised like I was, you know that your prince charming is going to come from the South. So, as I have lived in the Pacific Northwest, home of the Seattle Freeze (if you don't know what that is, it's the cold, scathing look you get when you say hello to perfect strangers in the street), for the last thirteen years of my life, you can imagine how easy it is to find one of those.

I was tired of the skinny, string bean, self-obsessed hipsters that strut along the streets of every city I wander in this God-forsaken drizzle-ridden hell. Not to worry. I don't really hate Washington all that much, though I would much rather live somewhere else if I was given the choice. I love the smiles of people when I visit my grandparents in Virginia, how you can stop any of them and have a decent conversation, then walk away and never have to know their name. Most of all, I remember my mother telling me that when she first lived in Enid, OK, with my dad after they got married, she'd never, ever have to pay for her drinks at the bars, because another man would always pay, simply because they wanted to show how nice they could be. And, yes, they might have just been doing it for some chauvinistic reasons, or they may have genuinely cared about making some strange lady special. All ulterior motives aside, I was desperate after my break-up with yet another self-involved pansy to care about attempting to find another man homegrown here. This is what came of my exasperation.

Lament of the Metropolitan Girl

Sauntering over unworried concrete that safeguards against earth, leaf, twig, fauna,

that keeps winding brush and bracken at bay,

I sorrowfully glean that there is little modern need for strong men.

Men who covet strength, who dream of being the muscled red-blooded heroes,

live in lulling comfort, tucked away in brick villas and oak cottages.

Soon, they take on the hysterics that women have conveniently long since abandoned

I yearn for a man, bloody-knuckled, wild tempered, and steeled,

with a five o’ clock shadow (hardly tolerated within civil company) and dirtied jeans,

ripped from labor and not some addlepated twit in some design office trying to give

her clients the false edge they cannot earn.

I shuffle past these peacocks, preening their perfectly coiffed faux-hawks, hidden beneath

fur lined hoods of H&M jackets, as their TOMS patter over the pavement…

enough to make my ovaries shrivel and turn in repulsion.

These are no men – bright birds without so much tooth or claw.

Give me a griffon instead: a beast, terrible beauty that could dismember my greatest foes,

who does not care to avoid the fray merely for the sake of keeping his feathers sleek.

At night, I lay waking as my wish bores holes in my mind.

I think of a man, not so frail that he cannot rock me to a molten place, eroded smooth

from a weathering heart and jarring disappointments.

Not so egocentric is he that he is unable to view my pleasure as a measure of his worth,

unable to get past anything but a man’s beady-eyed, onyx lined release.

The little jungle cat may purr and slink to entice, but matured am I that seeks out the truth

beneath flashy pelt, for something of more substance.

Only the elusive leopard’s prowess may gain sway over my wearied heart

as he sinks his claws into that prey known as my undivided attention.

No more momma’s boys for me – no.

But the rugged man shall someday make me his inamorata.