First Poem in Montana
(Infant rides the train with Mama
and discovers the center of the universe 2-28-07 )

Mother Angie waited with infant beautiful Mesa
to break horses on a ranch outside Billings.

Mesa is three months old. Outside on the train
platform in Chicago, Mother takes deep drag on cigarette.
The infant is not bothered. I ask impertinent question.

"What do you think of Britney Spears?"
"You mean the one who cut her hair?"
"Yea, and the media got on her for smoking?"
"I never smoke round Mesa"
"I don't think Britney's nanny smokes at all?"
"Well, smokers are shit you know."
"I don't smoke, but you have a right to smoke
into dark holes or the black matter of Orion."

Angie laughed. "Women are treated like yearlings."
Then she looked at me and asked? Do you think Mesa
will have it better?

“Tell Mesa every day she is beautiful and smart,
and the best breaker of yearlings; you take no shit from anyone."

“Yeah,” Angie answered. “I don’t. No man’s broke me.”

I looked at Mesa at just before the train was called and said:
someday in 2022 you will read a poem by Farragher
and wonder how you knew the poet.

Mesa’s eyes sparkled and she flung her arms as infants do,
and then she was quiet and understood.

My dark hole is easier to know. Mesa won't remember.