Holbrook, Utah

The West Between 40 and 66

In the fall of summer, students ride yellow buses
from nearby brown mesas and Indian villages.
An assortment of new teachers arrive on time
coming West from the barren land of Dakota.

In summer, town people scatter
and traveling tourists come to gaze,
new ones every night
watching Indians dance in a circle
at the old jail house
corner of Navajo and Hopi

When school's out, the library closes
except for a couple hours each week.
There are no picture shows
no bookstores, no yogurt shops.
There is a lot of dust, wind and rocks

We seldom get rain, clouds are thin.
There are a few skinny trees, but mostly hot sun.
We have a river, a tiny ribbon trickling
alongside a pair of flat railroad tracks
where trains shout through twice an hour
but never stop to let anyone on or off

There are eleven churches, big and small.
They seat and feed 50 to 100 seekers
on a good Sunday. Closed on a weekday.
There are less than 5,000 people
living, from time to time, in Holbrook.
The altitude is a lofty 5,000 feet
and Indians sit in the street
outside the Bucket of Blood Saloon,
where the first church once held services.

There are two video stores
and a place to buy tennis shoes.
Rocks hold the history and the industry.
The highway people are catered to
by restaurants, motels, and stone shops.
People spend money on polished, frozen wood
dinosaur eggs, and crystals of green ice.

Rock sellers, in cowboy boots, drive fancy cars.
The motel managers, from the East, drive bigger cars.
The ministers, wearing collars, drive grown up cars,
except the one, with a beard, wears Birkenstocks
and the one, from California, drives a sports car
with expired plates and balding tires.

The newest pastor's wife,
an earth centered environmentalist,
a politically correct feminist,
plants her garden in the moonlight
with the spirits of the night.

Her friends dance in circles
fogged with ancient smells
of rosemary and sage.
They light candles,
read tea leaves and bones,
and follow wild women ways.

The gardens she seeded
at the Parsonage were needed,
but are not to be weeded.
She gives some back to nature,
some she shares with neighbors,
and some adorns her salad bowl.

She has a higher plan
walks a little lighter
learns as she goes
holds the dirt in her hand
watches clouds flying on the wind
and listens to mocking birds
while watching crows fly high
in the space between road and sky.

There are scandalous litters of black & white cats
but no wild rabbits or scampering tree squirrels.
By the river cottonwood trees are white in winter
and alien mulberry trees don't propagate juicy berries.
Crows, looking like ravens, hover year round.
Hummingbirds migrate in September, with the first frost.
Someone gave us a cord of cedar wood
for Christmas, which I used to build a garden wall.

We have three small parks, seldom used.
One is the un-advertised highway rest stop,
one has an empty swimming pool, one a broken swing.
Streets are safe to walk after dark, without risk.
Truckers on the bypass stop at each end of town
guzzling fuel and sampling deep dish apple pie.

Route 66 didn't become obsolete.
It evolved into an interstate
renamed Highway 40.
A bridge across wastelands,
like an oasis in the desert
the west is too stubborn to die.

Annie H

Submitted: Sunday 14th March 2004, 1:58 PM

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