Somewhere in Montana #4
November 8, 2000

Next to the "No Loitering" sign hangs a mason jar suspended by a yellow rag. A closer look and I notice that the bottom of the jar is filled with dead bees. Suddenly I'm not in my hometown anymore and my mind delights that I am somewhere in a small town in Montana sitting at a forgotten about coffeehouse on the edge of a big city. And here I sit writing, the space around me being filled by the slow Jazz and the clang and bang of dishes being washed in a stainless steel sink. It feels good to be away, maybe on vacation, maybe just passing through on a long drive back home. White lights dangle in the storefront window like lightening veins and become brighter as the sun begins to set. I sit and watch the tired sky fade into a soft bluegray finger painting.

... But I am just the observer, I see things and I write them down and in my mind I have whittled my actual presence down to nil. Occasionally I see someone look my way, but then I look behind me to see what has caught their attention; a curio of antique silver rings and Celtic crosses catch the light underneath the glass and breathe loudly, like mangy dogs at a shelter that never will find a home.

A breeze of carbon monoxide gusts up from the cars as they drive by and limply sway a half pulled down string of triangle flags. I sit and watch from a string of chairs that begin just outside the front window of the cafe and end somewhere next to Foxy's Laundromat, where women in gray haired buns watch the rinse cycle with sallow faces. Inside something is turning, thoughts are developed and memories kindled making it possible for them to sit patiently as they wash their soiled bed sheets while thinking of their dead husbands.

The Eastern sky has darkened to the color of the underneath of my shoe, but in the west the light is slowly fleeting and the low clouds lay flat and rippled like the under belly of a fish. In less than an hour it will be closing time, and once again, all things become nothing more then just a figment of my imagination somewhere in Montana.