Roadtrip Poetry

I always tend to write out loud when I take solo road trips. I write and revise in my head until its too long to remember, then I pull over and write it down. I do that a lot, and somehow manage to leapfrog my way across the country. The first poem I ever had published was a roadtrip poem, as others have been. This one is a fiction, but was inspired by the trees of the canyons between Helena and Great Falls. So enjoy and forgive me if its a downer (it was a stormy day). And so help me Zeus if blogger messes up the spacing. -Aaron

I.
Hungry metaphors,
Asian bark beetles are killing the forests of
southern Alberta. The dead trees
are similes stripped of needles. On
any mountain you can see them blighted,
thin and grey, random against the evergreens,
stark victims of a ravenous chance.

II.
It was cancer that thinned her
thumb and forefinger
picked her from my side.
No salve for the sap of her body,
no graft for the blight in her limbs,
no cure for the beetles mating in her
breasts.

III.
Tragedies of chance.
An Asian beetle in Canada?
Why God do you misplace our maladies?