The sun may break through and tap the gray floor
of a valley flat and a man will wish momentarily
that he had been born at a different time,
as a different animal, maybe a bird that can wing
from the cliff side at some dawn of germs
when storms flustered at the edge of the world
like wild-haired dancers waiting for the winds
to change and push them through the mountain
gaps whose walls the day before made low pitches
from mint-smelling air that swayed the heads
of wheat like brushes painting the outline of crow
feathers on canvass. Then the masses fold back,
a crow bursts at the horizon, and he fears,
five strides ahead, that the sun will never shine again.
