A meadow in Rocky Mountain National Park

Over the place where Long’s Peak and its slightly less imposing companions stand in lofty isolation and invite the summer tourist to their cool retreats, the waves of an open sea once rolled and its tide as ebbed and flowed, unhindered by rock or shoal.” (NPS.gov)

Meadows swim: yellow, periwinkle, and green

framing curlicues of snaking streams

washed down from the mineraled mountain

I touch an icy, bubbling flow and salts eroded from ancient glacial slabs

coat my finger connecting me to those upswept ocean floors

The sea is now the sky, tides of air directing the clouds like swells

reflections wafting through the horseshoe streams

bringing clouds back to earth

Mirrors interrupted rhythmically by waving grasses until

it all feels

like an ancient weaving

like time turned over

like I have always walked here

 

2 thoughts on “A meadow in Rocky Mountain National Park

  1. Love starting with the NPS.gov quote. It grounds the poem in meaning, but it also reads like those songs that have a person talking before the music begins and that brings it into the real world in a really effective way.

    I really love the imagery and flow of this whole poem. You’ve done a really good job with it! I actually think playing with punctuation could help this poem. I often do puncuation-free poems, but I’d be interested to see how including punctuation impacts the flow of this one.

  2. Flow is what comes to mind as I read your poem. The line I absolutely loved is “The sea is now the sky, tides of air/ directing the clouds like swells”… The beauty of an upside down perspective. So much to learn and enjoy in this. Thank you for sharing this poem.

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