For Montana
We met on the shop floor, our hands
twisting knobs, torqueing nuts into place.
The factory smelled like grandparents
and their smoking rooms, sugary and thick
with warmth, a hungry buzz swirling
through the air as machines whizzed
and whirred, falling into mechanical
crescendo. We ate tomato and cheese
sandwiches at lunch. You moved here
from Montana, worried about the lack
of mountains. Maybe you just needed
a new reference point. We laughed often,
dribbled basketballs around the parking lot
during breaks. The first night we spent
together, we drove through the backroads
of my hometown, let the wind of July
roll across our hot necks as we cranked
the radio full blast and told stories
about our past lives, about how we ended
up here, running robots and assembling valves
in this rural patch of flatness and fear.
I smile now, and watch with slight disbelief
as you dance across our backyard, denim shoulders
swinging under a soft sunset. You hold hands
with the life we brought into ours. My lungs
could make a mountain of this moment.
I’d be a fool to imagine a portrait sweeter
than those orange soaked evening eyes.
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Caleb Edmondson‘s words can be found in Strange Horizons, Star*Line, and are forthcoming elsewhere. He is an MFA candidate at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, where he works as an editor at Mid-American Review.
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Stone Poetry Quarterly 