dusk slips into night,
as if a light switch is flicked and slowly, slowly dims,
foggy wisps and sheets of grey cloud
slip over us and between us and even the nearest ridge,
and the light slowly, slowly dims,
in those earliest hours before night breaks into day
high dappled clouds drift away overhead
and haloed stars begin to open themselves up to us,
electric lights in the valley below mark out the flatness and the roads,
and I feel myself on a perch of the mountain
where I stand and walk and consider,
as the night rolls on and the day just starts to roll over it,
I look into the west where black still suffuses the grey
and only the roughest rounded shapes reveal themselves,
distance there merges ridge and sky into a blur of sameness,
I look into the east where the lightest of blue and red
slips out between streaks of cloud,
now the fog hangs low in the valley
and streams to fill the hollows
as if to forget the lowlands
and be a sea upon which we, the mountains, are islands,
and great ones at that,
rose announces the coming of the sun,
then softens into cream just before the sun crests the clouds,
and, when it does, moment after moment of grandeur
centers upon and around the sun and its rise,
a centering that holds all we can see
we poor humans cannot hold it at all,
so, when we try, only tears reach close to the power,
with pictures and words I seek to not forget this time
when veils part enough to let us touch glory.
by Henry Walker
July 31, ’11
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