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