A disposable blue salt shaker

the plastic kind you get at the gas station
at the junction in Ovando
when you've decided to stay at Seeley Lake
for Thanksgiving being
a highway family and a gas station
a hearth, a road keeps pulling you
beyond bends and bends
in relentless snow, plastic
salt shaker rolling a light
grind in the scallop of aluminum
baking tin you bought for the turkey not
thawing in the hatch
for holidays, let the station run
run on, Mom is snoring
in the back seat, you at the wheel reeled
almost-all-the-way-up, Dad lightly giving heavy
suggestions.  Uselessly lovely
ice, grey-flecked peaks and sky of opalescent
haze, a baby's colossal stone tongue sinking
into mud and deep pine black and smeared
snow.  A place feels in this tire-slush
hush moving outward and inward and aging
and you say you nearly understand the man who killed
and Mom, O gentle dreamer stirring
in the back, she just nods.