Blindness

by Penny Orwick

Blindness

Rubbish, scraps of office paper? No,
feathers flying down the freeway,
from chickens piled atop each other
in a double semi load. They’re alive, sort of.
Necks swivel, eyes dead

as the barmaid’s in the Wallace pub.
Stuck between mountains and mines,
she sees only what she’s always seen:
closed bordellos, elevated interstate,
musty junk masquerading as antiques.

Her husband and the other guys
straddle ATVs through town,
rods or rifles on board as the season requires
to hit the same old places once again.
She pours microbrews they see no point in tasting.

One block north in dank dive bars
where tourists aren’t quite welcome
miners and loggers throw fists
over cheap whiskey, dusty prom queens,
intemperate wagers.

Southeast of town I hike to the mine shaft
where 45 men survived the Big Burn of 1910.
Pulaski trapped them at gunpoint,
spared them a fiery death,
and paid with temporary blindness.

Stuck with her husband in this narrow crease,
the barmaid can’t picture my life in its broad valley.
In the middle of the trailer, piss and shit
trickle down; the chickens are no longer white.
They’ll never see daylight again.

Penny Orwick lives in Missoula, Montana, where she bikes, hikes, and skis when she's not reading, writing, cooking, or digging in the dirt. Recently retired from many years of writing for engineers, she's rediscovering the joy of metaphor and wordplay. She has an M.F.A. from the University of Montana.