ramblin injun tune

                Chasing The Sun Across The Hi-Line

The sun’s seasonal cycle southward
Started months before my small journey west

Back to the very minute after the longest day
The day that ended here in this treasure state

Working its same sunny wandering path
Along the changing horizon of giant steel elevators

Gray towers of grain from the Golden Triangle
From the Hutterites and undersized family farms

Slowly taking your set and arraigned moments
Unlike us who faithfully fail to plan the time ahead

Just before Halloween with its harvest moon
Over endless amber stubble both north and south

Almost the same moon that stood gleaming cold
Cold over last February’s heaped snow

My late start was out of the upper Missouri
Near a river bank once stacked with dead wolves and cord wood

Forcing me to chase the sun across the Hi-Line
Causing great worry even before the start

Autumn air warm with clear sunshine
Gave a false hope, un-lasting but convincing

Just until the vista of the Sweet Grass Hills
Or even the remembered flats southwest of Saco and Hinsdale

Again I fail and the sun slowly dips
Below the backbone of the world

Leaving only the dark and finally easing
My chase across the Hi-Line

                     by 

               Joseph R. McGeshick

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