The Blue Fell

The sky was catching its breath on the mountaintop
It had come a long way I suppose in a hurry its journey

Not yet done For whom do you carry these tears
Asked the fell For a son who has lost his father

The sky answered though this cloud has enough
Grief that some may fall on the car just now lost

In its fog The pines on the fell bristled and the under
Growth glistened with derision The fog said the fell

Is mine it arises from my circumstance in the lower
Green regrets it is too humble to creep over these

Heights and the fell broke the cloud and the cloud’s
Own dying half-crept east bleeding clear rain

and wind from the contours
Broke it further

And a man awoke from a dream of holding his
Mother who was crying but in the dream the tears

Were words in other languages because she had forgotten
Her own language six years ago the words rolling

Across the floor like marbles rolling incomprehensible
And outside his father younger by forty years

Was mowing the lawn shirtless he liked how the mower
Was so loud no one could call his name

Until he was done then I blinked halfway up the fell
Sleet clattering like marbles off the windshield

I took him up once at the top on a clear day
We stood there with nothing between us

And we went back down together