In 1946, they said Route 287 was the most scenic highway in America,

and if it wasn’t, it was going to be.

From Choteau, Montana straight to Mexico,

the only place it stops is a few short miles in Yellowstone.

It’s the Rocky Mountain Highway, the longest three-digit road in the country.

There are nuns on the last Colorado stretch of 287, and Buddhist monks,

also a small white church with a graveyard and two outhouses.

It was a windy day, not good for lightweights,

but he didn’t worry; he took it anyway.

He, the semi-truck driver with a tractor-trailer hauling a single-wide manufactured house.

Or I thought it was a house, turns out it was a barn,

somebody’s already-bought barn, and empty.

He was ahead of me, not that far, but it all happened slowly anyway:

the gust of wind, the wheels off the ground, the big rig tipping—portside—

then that long vinyl barn plunging, straight off the side of the

most scenic highway in America.

I got out and talked to the driver.

He swore some, but the barn was still gone,

blowing its way as one, then in pieces, further and further towards freedom

I wonder, sometimes, if that barn ever touched down at the church, or the abbey,

if it drew itself up for one glorious turn about the high altitude plains, the evergreen mountains

Or if somewhere along the way, it stopped and wondered to itself what the meaning was

of a manufactured barn on a diesel-burning semi-truck on a concrete highway cut right through the

most beautiful part of the country, couldn’t make sense of this, and got tired of trying.