Californians Are Moving to Montana

and I am practicing not hating them
for buying houses over the phone,
for outbidding all the ladies in my book club,
for drooling over our dirt cheap dirt.

Priced out of four walls four years ago,
I live behind an engine:
interior sized small enough
to lose,
the yard big enough
to find.

I want to ask these Golden State transplants
what the point is of a second home–

raging
I was here first,
but I wasn’t.

It was the Salish,
the Kootenai,
the Kalispel people

who made deer run
and kept streams full;

living on broken shards of land now
in homes even I could afford.

Maybe they hated me at one time,
maybe they hate me still.

For didn’t I come off the interstate exit
and kiss the ground cleaved by Hellgate Canyon,
asking no one’s blessing to home here.

First published in Weber Journal, Vol. 40, Fall 2023