Montana Fifty Years Ago, by J.V. Cunningham

Gaunt kept house with her child for the old man,

Met at the train, dust-driven as the sink

She came to, the child white as the alkali.

To the West distant mountains, the Big Lake

To the Northeast. Dead trees and almost dead

In the front yard, the front door locked and nailed,

A handpump in the sink. Outside, a land

Of gophers, cottontails, and rattlesnakes,

In good years of alfalfa, oats, and wheat.

Root cellar, blacksmith shop, milk house, and barn,

Granary, corral. An old World Almanac

To thumb at night, the child coughing, the lamp smoked,

The chores done. So he came to her one night,

To the front room, now bedroom, and moved in.

Nothing was said, nothing was ever said.

And then the child died and she disappeared.

This was Montana fifty years ago.

From “The Poems of J.V. Cunningham,” edited with an introduction and commentary by Timothy Steele (Swallow Press: 216 pp., $16.95 paperback) Copyright 1997 Reprinted by permission.