background image
314
6
with the cloud-fi lled, light-fi lled sky
always busy above it,
Meeker would have looked at it
now and then, though long settled
into his thoughts -- left to them
by the long empty stretches
that show themselves at a glance.
7 & 8
Watched a storm sinking slowly-
quickly over Elk Mountain,
all a bluish mistiness
outside, while inside would be
the intimacy of snow
or rain entering the pines
and grasses in the quiet --
at last only the foothills
stood clear, under the storm's fl ank,
the low sun shining on them
across the plain. Later, saw
some antelope near the road,
seeming made of the buff light
in the grass they were grazing on.
9
Dropped into broken country --
bluff s and washes, dead gray, bare.
Right at the surface, deadness
of what was never alive,
deadness of the oldest rock,
deadest clay, scandal showing
what the alive have come from.