MONTANA WIVES

I had to laugh,
For when she said it we were sitting by the door,
And straight down was the Fork
Twisting and turning and gleaming in the sun.
And then your eyes carried across to the purple bench beyond the river
With the Beartooth Mountains fairly screaming
With light and blue and snow
And fold and turn of rimrock and prairie
as far as your eye could go.
And she says, "Dear Laura,
Sometimes I feel so sorry for you,
Shut away from everything, eating out your heart
with loneliness.
When I think of my own full life
I wish that I could share it.
Just pray for happier days to come, and bear it."
She goes back to Billings to her white stucco house,
and looks through net curtains
at another white stucco house,
And a brick house,
And a yellow frame house,
And six trimmed poplar trees,
And little squares of shaved grass.

Oh dear, she stared at me like I was daft.
I couldn't help it! I just laughed and laughed.

~Gwendolen Haste

~"Meet Me in Montana"~