Highway 287 South

I was sipping some strong Folgers
in the Brown &; Gold coffee shop,
wearing my favorite cut-offs,
A UWYO sweatshirt, and thongs,
listening to a little Stan Getz
on the box,
trying to moralize The Tropic of Cancer,
when Allen found me.

He told me although at this time
I wrote little more than gibberish,
He thought I could metamorphose into
a beautiful butterfly of thought.

It was like he reached down
and pulled me out from under a deeply buried rock.
He wanted me to go to Boulder and
become a polished jewel of poetry,
a Wyoming meadowlark singing tunes of the 60's.

He told me he was willing to share a little
of the ball he had stolen from
Whitman if I wanted
to run with it
for awhile.

He smiled as I howled my delight
with all the animal I could find in myself.
My voice carried beyond
the Wind River Canyon,
echoed off the Bighorns,
swept right over the Snowy Range
and headed for the Rockies.

Tossing Miller's book into the bucket,
I hurried over to Knight Hall,
packed a weeks worth of notebooks,
some underwear, my shades, barrettes,
the stash I had hidden in the laundry,
and headed down Highway 287 South,
on the road to becoming an icon.

Bobbie Kilzer Gogain