The Mountain Storm

Finally, the storm that had roiled
and railed throughout night's
passage into the dim light of dawn
begins to wear out its incendiary,
bellowing passion. The half-drowned
world below the weeping cauldron of the
sky lifts its sodden head in relief.

Dripping ceaselessly from the night's
assault, the relentless drumming
of the dark sky, as black clouds defied
one the other's domination, like the
clash of ferocious Titans, the world
shook itself and soon the dense
cloak of fog slunk away, leaving a
shimmering veil of mist to accede to
the strengthening sun's imperious
command to summarily depart.

Rivers of rainwater, storm water,
the blood of that celestial combat,
tumbled down mountain slopes,
gathering momentum and thundering
and tossing, hauling all unsecured in
their wake, trees and shrubs and
rocks and soil all submitting to the
fury and the majesty of Nature's
imperious anomalous tantrums.

The tumbling mountain streams,
icy, swollen beyond their narrow fluted
confines, hurtle through and over, beyond
and between time-and-water-scarred,
stony-ridged passages, on the remote,
impervious mountain slopes. Boulder-
strewn and tree-stumped, the excited
wide and running, tumbling rivers
thrash over all in their riotous passage.

Great steaming, boiling cauldrons of
water rushing to the great beyond of the
world's vast seas and waterways, stream
and steam, carrying in their irresistible
grip the unresistant detritus of forested
slopes, thundering the atmosphere,
flailing all in their path, enjoining Nature's
chaos as she wills it, when she does.