Rare Day
It was my bright-eyed boy pointed out
The stark, stacked, sandstone blocks of NCAR
Flattened against the thrust-up titan slabs,
Brute crown above the muted fields and town;
My own eye was drawn to their bisection
By Ash-brushed, flat-bottomed barrier of cloud
Which imposed over our nearest future
Its damp assay, its rainy day reckoning.
Sunshine still scattered its accustomed
Hospitality, clearly non-sempiternal,
Cooling beneath the peaked cumulus cap,
Highlighting its own retreat, bent back
From early trot of oversized raindrops.
I, day-dreaming the leonine color
Of wildfire along the Poudre northwest,
The Hewlett harassing the gristled green
Around Greyrock, my former hiking grounds.
The wildfire had grown all week beyond hope
Of containment without the weather's help.
It's overwrought to join the starred tokens
Of this gratefully anticipated
Wet front into Herakles engaged in
Muscle-bound relief, the least complex
In character of superman labors,
But that's what it does to you, this landscape
That struts its favor even against
Parnassos and Olympos, that lures me
To unreasonable covetousness
Of its storied bounties, this obvious haunt
Of the myth-sized, rock-fired fantastical.
Or is that just my gaze, imported poet's?
My boy with his bright eye at myth-hound age
Lights first upon the box of exhibits,
The petting-zoo displays of atmosphere
And space, the gadgetry that tells utter
Tales of solar wind out to heliopause,
Bow shock and Van Allen radiation belts.
It's already old hat, these mist-moistened
Mountains, the fresh, tumbling swell of Poudre,
Of St. Vrain after rain such as today's.
My children, born of this land already
Leap from the world's rooftop to weirding fire
Of blue jets, sprites, aurorae and beyond.
They mind effects of real or imagined
Space weather on their playtime devices.
I see myself as grounding of those circuits,
Providing home perspective for their flights,
Set to vault unmeasured kilometers.
My generation having pushed to the edge
The ecosystems we fancy ourselves
Fit to steward, the young next must relieve
The earth of some portion of our burdens,
Begin to put out the fire of their numbers.
For today, the word is: "Look son! Do look!
The red-grey-green Flatirons and that spreading
Bundle at their crown! A rain day for your
Soccer season finals, and afterward,
Over hot chocolate, I've a few legends,
Tales suitable for just such a rare day."