THE STEGER Prize For Poetry
The Summer I Turn 79
by Cheyenne Romaine
will be in Montana
a place I haven’t been yet,
but seems oddly fitting, the
vast, flat expanses of brown grass,
the blazing cowboy heat.
In the morning, I might peer into
a mirror framed in tarnished gilt
silver, stretch out my face
until the wrinkles disappear from
under my eyes and around my
mouth, and I feel a lifting from
my body as bits of the past
escape from where they have been
hiding. My morning ritual:
cleansing myself of unwanted
baggage. Before you wake, but
after the sun has risen, I’ll
stand, naked, before the eastern window,
toes curling on warm wood,
the luxury of a sunbath yet
unburdened by dust and the
distant smells of livestock and
city (by that time, even the
emptiness of the North may have
been encroached upon, the virgin
wildness ravaged by concerns of
light pollution and noise pollution and
air pollution, politics and religion).
I’ll wear my long white hair up, to
feel the sweat trickle down my
neck, celebrating the journey of
each drop and wondering where our
children and grandchildren are in
their own, particular journeys.
And in the evening, we’ll go
to a steakhouse where our family
will meet, and order ribs and steaks
and wines, all with a side order
of memories. We’ll smile and laugh,
surrounded by Sunday dinner
feasting families, so hungered by God’s
words, and modestly celebrate
my last summer, while I sit
and watch each face and I wish
the chalky red walls would fall
away to the traffic and city, and
those would fall away to the
plain, the wind, the horizon, Wishing
the crashing down of the world,
though I must know such destruction
would surely snuff out the table’s
single candle while,
the dust and wallpaper glue and
last breath of my generation would
swirl into my lungs. And I will
close my eyes and breath out,
a long, easy sigh, my belly full
of ribs and barbeque sauce, without
the worry of the bill, finally, on
my mind. And I will lean against
you, watch you pull at
ribs, your hands shaking slightly.
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