Valley of Nine-Pipes

Columbia Falls, Montana, August 2006

In the valley of Nine-Pipes

A white-washed screen

At the Bearded Goat Drive-In

Pushes through prairie sedge

Like an eviction notice

A bloody sun sinks

Below the Hungry Horse

A ‘53 eggshell Ford

Motors into place like

Hoof-beats and frontier justice

Tonight’s feature

A hand-colored western

Shamefaced facades on a back lot

An unshaven desperado

The only one with a conscience

Notes:

Kalispell has undergone a demoralizing, inevitable suburban sprawl

since I first visited in 1977. On the road to Columbia Falls is an

anachronistic Drive-In theater. On a marginal back-street in

Columbia Falls is a 1953 Ford with an eggshell blue paint job and no

rust. Maia wanted to buy it and tow it back to Minnesota so she’d

have a car to drive to high school. The Bearded Goat is reference to

mountain goats – the ones that seem to peer at us from a rocky

ledges wondering how soon humans will self-destruct. Nine-Pipes

and Hungry Horse are pictorial names I like that are found south or

southwest of Glacier Park.