Epic Road Trip #3

for T, a Sun Prairie farm girl with the eyes of a hawk

We drive through Colorado in a May blizzard:
The jaw-dropping gorges are white,
the rivers and pines are diamond encrusted,
the peaks incandescent in white sky.

The pelicans at 10,000 feet fly through realms of frosted light.

All has been purified: the Rifle Baptist Church,
the Parachute Optimists Club, the Silt Chamber of Commerce,
the Glenwood Vapor Caves, the log cabins in the town of No Name,
the A frames on the other side of the abyss,
the Vail golf courses, the falling Breckenridge lakes,
the tin roofs and coal chutes,
the back 40 cedar outhouses in once-black dirt,
the trees growing out from the top of a silo,
the tires laid on tarps that keep the hay dry,
the cow pens with mounds where milking mothers stand.

It's white from Fruita to Frisco, Gypsum to Brush,
as far east as Yuma, Akron and Amherst.
We watch in Ovid some round baled alfalfa
melt into wet golden light.