Big Sky Blue/Bette Wolf Duncan

rocky mountain memories
are painting on the air.
the painting’s called Montana:
and memory paints me there.
i’m western-born and western-bred;
fed on elk and bannock bread.
my heart is home . . . back home, again
to haunts that I once knew;
and once again, my memory
paints me big sky blue.

i miss Montana’s great expanse
of sage and rims and clouds;
and peaceful solitude of plains
unmarred by hectic crowds.
and when it paints the ‘beartooths’,
it paints a living prayer,
whose sheer magnificence proclaims,
“there is a God.  He’s there”.

bette wolf duncan  1991