En Route to Rock Springs, Wyoming, March 24th, 1997,
	7000 Feet Above Sea Level



	Lightning scars track as afterimages
	while on either side cliffs loom
	slashed by the tar and asphalt
	by yellow and white lines
	Night flows over the gorge

	Clouds like bleached neon on almost-black
	menace the blue deeper than indigo
	A storm scours the rockface with hail
	and occludes the mountaintops
	in an almost-frozen fog of snow

	Too close, the cirrus pinchers menace
	giant crab claws posed to snatch, to rend
	when I break through to stars

	old friends from my childhood
	from before I grew nearsighted
	They light the sky with thousands of eyes

	The moon eats slow shadow
	as full slides into gibbous and slivers
	through crescent to almost-new
	Charcoal on black, unlit but visible
	and shrouded in a halo that blots out stars

	while the Hale-Bopp flares toward Andromeda
	free from snow, from the storm
	Below and beyond Orion's foot
	aimed at his invisible Achilles heel
	a departure of lifetimes