Above the Storm
Three miles up roads clinging to Bear Springs Mountain
sits a house with one wall made of glass.
I overwintered there as a slave to a wood stove,
digging ditches through three feet of packed snow
to the emergency stash of second-rate firewood.
But Spring's storms more than made up for it.
The house rides high atop one mountain ridge
and looks across to another. A deep green valley vee
cuts, winding, between them filled with a river
of clouds and fog on which to look down.
The ridges themselves wear evergreens.
An artillery of thunder shook the glass wall,
in fact, the whole house at dawn.
Below the river of steely clouds and wisps of mist
it was raining, pouring. The knives of lightning
muted and diffused beneath them
like Christmas tree lights through angels' hair.
Then from further, further, further above
a waterfall seemed to come cascading
down over the storm in the valley.
After only a few riotous minutes it was gone,
leaving the immense boulders,
so delicately sprinkled over the lawn, bare,
revealing the large, earth-filled stone depressions
gouged in the mountain's old bald head by receding glaciers
which would soon fill with foxgloves and daffodils
left like gifts from gods of thunder and lightning,
which, 'til then I had never seen
upside down.
