It isn’t easy to forget
The history of this country
In fact, the I-90
From Missoula to Bozeman
Won’t let you

There, on the edge
Of snaking asphalt
Are simple, empty cabins
Of frontiersmen
And early settlers

It’s not hard to see
How it must have been
The hills and valleys
Are as attractive today
As they were then

Trucks rush by
80 miles an hour
Paying the shacks no more notice
Than the crumpled carcasses
Of elk and deer

They are all skeletons
Of foregone beauty
Home in a field
When a wagon track ran by
And there were no fences

Now they lean on time
Like shipwrecks
From another era
Washed up on the shores
Of the interstate