Crossing West Montana

Obviously we are speeding through this scene:
Even without the clue of the highway ahead,
the shoulders blur past, the nearest trees
have that nervous look, as if auditioning,
used to standing almost still and far off
(and so they did, for miles and miles),
now holding their breath and preparing
for the big moment of looming huge
and flashing by. The distant mountains,
too, are torn between immobile towering
and flowing off to either side,
deliquesced by the ripple of our passage,
like waves spread across a lake
by a motorboat. Only the clouds
resist our journey, swallowing it up
in their own cross-current, remaining,
mile after mile and landscape after
landscape, the almost unmoving emblem
of a swift ebulient motion,
dolphins arrowing over the mountains.
To them, we almost stand still,
as if we merely move, but they
are our motion.

Dean Blehert

Last Updated: October 6, 2002