For Brad
 
 
My brother and I knew our town was invisible
from the freeway. We were going to have to make
a signal fire. The Oregon Trail went right through
our front yard, but it wasn’t much use to us,
so we spent our weekends catching catfish in the Snake.
 
That rock was big as a house and people said
a volcano threw it before the town came along.
We learned all the handholds pretty quick and kept part
of our lunches for after school to eat up on top.
When we made the fire up there you can bet everyone
in town saw it. But not a single truck came in off
the freeway for us. They just pounded on to Portland
and we still had to go back to school on Monday.
 
 
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M.R. Smith is a technology executive writing in Boise, Idaho. His work has appeared in publications such as The Cascadia Review, Camas, The Literary Bohemian, Punchnel’s, The Red River Review, the FutureCycle Press anthology What Poets See, and the Western Press Books anthology Manifest West among others.