Montana Young

Montana Young

            Our children grow, leave, and don’t come back.

Somewhere else they go. It’s the stupid lack

of labor. Shouldn’t say “stupid”: I meant that fate

is inept and misspoke my feeling. In their teens and twenties

they leave at a steady rate

because here is no state of plenty,

only woods and uplands and rivers and lakes

each one has had to lovingly forsake.

They’re not seeking fame,

but they go all the same.

They say, “We have to make our living.”

Maybe they’re back for ten days of summer or at Thanksgiving—

a pittance of return.

Mothers and fathers seethe and churn

in the hollow solitude they leave

behind, the next worse thing to grieving.

            They’re very like ancestors out of the past

Leaving natal land, to cast

themselves in a different, almost foreign place. French or Finn,

Irish, German, Norwegian—these young are doubly kin

to their own grandfathers. Why come this far in time and space

to run again the same—yes, stupid—race?

            And so our boy is in Ohio or Nebraska, far from the Flathead,

And our girls watch streams of Chicago or San Diego traffic instead

Of the Bitterroot or Yellowstone.

And we—you and I—are alone.

And mine and my neighbor’s son and daughter,

Far from the Skalkaho, Lolo’s summit, or the Clearwater,

Feel even more bereft

than those they left.