Rocky Mountain Sonnet
Fall up into a windowless vault of sky,
where voice cannot relate Colorado’s blue.
The tundra will need decades to undo
the harm if your foot strays onto frost. Sigh
at vastness clouded thousands of feet high—
Long’s Peak, a slate citadel staring through
the rotary of hours as the mist accrues
around the aloof crest. Watch the wind’s cry
lure billows into a gray mass, thread the chill
of winter through the eye of June, a surge
that overpowers daylight. Sparks drill
granite, shining in your eyes. Blink to merge
gray with sapphire and gape, exposed, until
you realize: lightning strikes are final as words.
(originally appeared in The New Formalist)
