September Sky

One windless morning,

mounds of golden rabbitbrush

below mounds of cloud.

Gray

A swollen mass of clouds conceals the peak. When the mountain is masked this way, I feel a kinship to her. I want to retreat behind clouds.

The peaks generate their own atmosphere. Clouds mass around the summit -- I imagine the silent roil of the mist and wish I could be up there, enveloped, hidden.

Clouds and Shadows

Everything that surrounds Blanca reaches for the mountain, somehow. The clouds lower themselves to engulf her. My house extends its shadow to her. My eyes, lungs, heart expand to take her in.

Sometimes I complain that nothing ever happens out here. Yet the clouds' slow drama is ongoing. The sky changes from one moment to the next. In sunlight and moonlight, shadows carry on their intense, silent life.

Evening Clouds

Sullen clouds gathering over the mountains. A walk at twilight. A restless current in the air. The dogs won't settle down -- Jake races straight at me, skirting a head-on collision by about an inch.

One of the clearest memories from my childhood: summer afternoons driving through rural New Mexico on the way to California, evening squalls, air swollen with rain and the scent of sage. Sometimes I think those memories led me here.