Rocky Mountain Sonnets
I. Trail Ridge Road
Fall up into this windowless vault of sky,
where words cannot relate Colorado’s blue.
The tundra will need decades to undo
my harm if a foot strays from the path. I sigh
at vastness clouded thousands of feet high—
Long’s Peak, citadel aloof, staring through
the morning, supreme (though I can’t see into
the mountain’s silent thoughts). The wind’s cry
now calls the storm-massed billows, draws a chill
down into my being as the gray swollen surge
ripples into the afternoon. Sparks drill
the granite, shining in my eyes. Blinking, I merge
gray with sapphire, and gape, shivering, until
I realize: lightning strikes are final as words.
II. Mills Lake
At the gorge’s sharp edge, the glacier-carved,
suspended path forms a jagged staircase.
Traversing the thinned air of soaring space,
I listen, beneath my own thudding heart,
to the harmony of water falling apart.
Up further I glimpse the foaming birthplace
of a stream, the rock veined and scored, encased
by trailing fern, guarded by columbine and lark-
spur. Then green canopy fades; trail’s end brings
the sound of lake waters lapping against shore.
Azure spread beneath the Keyboard of the Winds
draws my eye to the summit; perception ascends
into clouds. And I stand still, longing for more
time in this silence of majestic things.
(originally appeared in The New Formalist)