~Promise

I notice the green turning brown
and the windy warmth of the dry
air that says “Montana, it’s August.”

It’s nowhere else, this feeling
that asphalt and lichen are creeping,
both oozing across their rocks.

That rodents start storing and
birds empty the feeder in record
time; nameless, timeless hoarding.

It’s the movement of the heat
that keeps it interesting- it’s exactly
what movement always does.

The dance, the  sway of the
breezing brush throwing out its
eager arms for dry sun, it calls me.

The voice is raspy, smoky even,
as it pulls me in to the story of
mountains and stream beds and meadows.

I love the smell of it all-of the green
and the brown that hits my nose now,
knowing I can wait and watch with the birds

and the rabbits and the trees and the
streams and the green and the brown, for
the still promise of orange and yellow and white.

~D Gregory Smith