If you peer between that searching sun and sleeping-smiling moon –
That is where the actors live, in and around this nightly saloon:
A universal theatre, framing the wild-west mountains;
If you are here early enough you might hear them,
Singing as they build their sacred space for service,
A free, all-calling carousel, wheeling words through woods;
If the iambic bark on those trees could speak,
They would sound as silvery young, as supple in sap,
As this brightly branched ensemble who name new plains and glades;
If between your moose hunt and your exit pursued by a bear
You take your place in this parkland story, you might,
Like that pig farmer, reckon Broadway no better than this Arden;
If you watch our actors dismantle their world,
Then you might feel how Montana loves them back to their city,
Cuts them into little stars, and flings them into the broad sky.
by Paul Edmondson