Over a green-gray pool a cloud puffs want, 
flounders, bright in its palpability.

Hours bolt, crash flat through what remains: 
massive trees and paved-heat sounding

of your car when we drive the length
of an unended day. Sun-opened I watch

our steps, wide eyed. I roam as thunder 
covers mid-summer. Water-fragrant

the prairie shifts with dogs, sheep, and grass, 
stark in their titled pasture. In stone mist,

you see a deer, we watch it scatter with wind.
The wind spreads, like the crack of dawn

to soak the soil. With the sky-stabbing possibility 
of this being. Before I shatter, I am still.