Over fir boughs
of mountain crest
blowing a wave
over moon until moon
is no guide and no god

and the spruce
are directionless arrows
obliterated and flaring
to the canyon

that clears night
into cloud swirl
mountainless air
of blizzard black soldiers

climbing blinded
by the churn
of a rage not their own
and an enduring rip
of wind that began

as granite the glacial
striations and larkspur                                                
and the blood
in the bull moose’s
urine stain on old snow

already obscured
by the first new flakes
and to be dark far
under the drifts of morning
           comes meanwhile

twenty miles off and
five thousand feet down
where I stand
to the plate glass storm
that’s mere rain this low

and stare
snug and certain
into the end
of what every one
of us will see.

                                    --originally appeared in LitRag