gassed up after Ashland | brought two sodas
out of the cooler, to the front | wheatgrass swept
across the prairie | pinyons bent with wind | cattle
in the cricks and runs | big head miles off
in the range and reach | scars of white green light | up
into Bighorn Forest | sky breathes | coming
up on Crow land in a brand-name car
then hail | then saltpeter sucked up from the declivities
into sky’s hands and hurled back down in buckets | hail
like locusts pummeling white down on hoods
and glass and what we call America and no cover
outside the town’s edge caught in the roughage
cut together like an old recipe | water and air | projectile |
sandstone bleeding white on the shoulder crawling
cross pavement like a parasite | hail finds
a divot in the windshield and that’s that | hail like
snow | hail like you’ve never seen before | the land
bending back against history | sky still something
to falter at | sky still awesome | this wasn’t in
the weather reports | those said
clear and dry | black clouds white
hands | a sense of frisson | a sense of enormity |
a sense | there is a sense that has been
lost to us | a sense that sky is more than
scaffolding | the asphalt broken | the sieve
is broken | it has spilled
across the highway | there is sky
all over the place | there is a dark funnel coming |
it is pioneer weather | it is a pick strike |
it is a price | sky seeps through blistered roof
and wraps itself around us | and i am smiling |
i am smiling with my hands turned into
cups of glass and water | the sky is here |
the sky is coming back into the world | at last
the sky is coming
|
Hailstorm at Lame Deer.