Adam Jon

​I can’t keep
guns, so
it’s me and my cats.

​They’re great hunters, cats,
but terrible hikers,
as trustworthy as I am.
So, out here, nothing separates me

​except

​twenty miles of limestone,
dirt finer than bone meal,
ghosts of limber pine
stunted and brittled,
dry air and drier snow,

​and the wish of—
of annihilation by meteorite.

​Long odds, I know—
staring down the crag
of the Pryor Mountains.
​Foothills, really—pocketed islands,
fragile until you’re in them
breathing yucca
thriving on indifference,
swallowing your voice.

Here would do,
strung between dust and rock.

​No one expects the plains
of Montana. Not postcard-perfect.
No shining peaks.

Just grass and swale
buckling reflections
in infinite ice
where gulch and gully

​perfect the art of hiding
a herd of eighteen antelope
and a man who can’t keep guns—
dissembling meteors.