Remember how the cold light of the full moon arced through the branches of the ponderosa pines They split it, softened it, made it run like water Why was the moonlight like that? The unseen treetops had whipped it while stirring like flotsam on a violent sea Clouds rode on the back of the wind, then muted the ferocious trees They coagulated those pools of liquid moonlight But we missed how the sky transformed thereafter, driven to shelter from the driving sleet Instead, we remember the rippling of fabric, the battering projectiles, our little domed oasis I awakened through the night and saw the liquid moonlight in your own eyes Then, we heard not the guttural howl but caressing sounds Snow rode in the belly of the riotous clouds, its gentleness an insurgency itself Remember that morning, how glittering white splattered the moss on those ponderosa trunks
The advent of a storm
