Now that wet street smell
evening rush hour,
and I have a flat tire.
This morning
a dead dog in the ditch
a black roamer who would come in
and leave our yard sniffing.
Now this rain
this stranding at a gas station
this dead dog in the ditch day.
Two bearded house painters
push through the glass doors,
decide out loud not to pay taxes this year.
No forms in the post office
the day before they're due.
It is spring
time to move
see with thinner opinions
the reason we made it
through another winter
the heavy and clear
trueness
of things.
A dead black dog
a flat tire
a good rain.
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Cedar Brant was born in a barn in northwest Montana. She spent her youth fascinated by wolves. This intrigue propelled her into biology, and a love affair with the land and culture of the rural west. For the past ten years, she has worked from Yellowstone to the empty valleys of Nevada, Oregon and Montana as a botanist and field biologist. She spends her summers living in a trailer in various rolling grasslands, counting and keying out plants, and honing her four-wheeling skills. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Camas, and Poems Across the Big Sky. "Stranded At Noon's" was published in her 2010 collection Like Any Other Dream Will Do.