The July towns, the crowds, the sweat
dwindle to bluegreen pools of haze
islanded with hills.
Here on the lashed summit
we are scoured clean as this bleached tableau
of ghostly snags, as the limestone
boulders we teeter on in ceaseless gusts
while birds, their taut songs quick and few,
dart in sun whose copper glare
is day of an alien world.
We cling together here
because we must—our summery cottons
do not turn back the chill.
We must shelter in each other’s warmth,
huddle, cheek pressed to cheek,
to gaze into tumbling shreds of storm
as into wild creation.
Somewhere in haze beneath us
waits the hot room, the close moist life
where we recoil
and leisurely reclaim the heat
which disunites us, islands our
content in that sultry country
we know best.
But now, in this flayed light
where the blue roars and cold clings
harshly to our face and hands
that world is below:
it is a light that reconciles
and the black, pouring road to separations
downward.
