Evanescent Alert

Observe, clouds, dark with their watery burden 
dangle over mountain tops just as 
skeins of vapour rise from the valleys, 
diaphanous, white as a ghostly presence, 
lifting from the vibrant verdancy, the 
green canopy sodden and brilliantly hued.  
The mountain road rose steeply, curving
its tenuous ribbon of glistening pavement 
around and about the steep sides, passing 
the lush grandeur of the forest, and high 
above a hawk soars, surveying its territory, 
riding the wind. The inexorable rise 
introduces lone vehicles cresting the pass to 
the outer margins of cloud stalled in their 
skyward progress, impaled on the granite 
mountain stubs rising above the treeline
 until soon all is engulfed within the 
wisp-grey mist, dense enough to obliterate 
sight-lines, obdurate enough to shelter 
the landscape from eyes orienting to an 
absence of observable boundaries, entrenching
danger into the misadventure of a scenic 
mountain pass threading a mountainside 
on the occasion of an overwhelming 
storm under deceptive low cloud cover.