Under a russet sky smudged with dirt east of Twin Falls
on I-84, a yellow crop duster banks hard
over fields bordering the highway, swooping
above trucks and travelers, laying a plume over potato fields
with the precision of a pastry chef.
Barn swallows admire his moves from a power line.
We press west into dry, scrubby flatlands,
summer’s dead grass competing with sagebrush and
stones, our tired eyes grateful to rest
on lush sugar beet leaves even for a minute.
Jerome is a blur of double-wides and rusty horse trailers,
its hardscrabble scene giving way to beef cattle,
red calves standing in the shade of their mothers.
Wendell offers nothing
but the promise of Papa Kelsey’s pizza.
The white line on the shoulder deviates briefly
over the back of a dead skunk.
We gas up at Bliss.
House keys press against my thigh,
itching to unbolt a door hundreds of miles away.
Snake River, Glenns Ferry, and Mountain Home
bid us roll on to the Columbia.
Farms yield to bleached buttes and bladed sentries
towering over a snake’s paradise.
This featureless road is a life sentence.
A government sign for Duck Valley Reservation
is posted next to wildfire scars – even the dirt looks burnt
(Fat City Fireworks dead ahead).
Boise State Public Radio gets us to Oregon’s Blue Mountains.
Who knew Idaho was as wide as Texas?
Dayle Olson hosts a poetry open mic on the Columbia River in Cathlamet, Washington, across the water from Raymond Carver’s birthplace. She is founder of River Writers, a monthly radio conversation with writers on KMUN 91.9 in Astoria, Oregon. She is a recent Northwest Voices guest writer at Lower Columbia College. Her work has appeared in Cathexis Northwest Press, North Coast Squid, The Bookends Review, and elsewhere. Her prose poem won first prize in the 2024 Oregon Poetry Association contest. She also creates zines and illustrates them with poorly drawn birds.