The Mountain Falls

The long mountain switchedbacked road led 
to the destination that memory recalled insisting 
it be revisited so yearners could again experience 
that ephemeral exposure to nature raw and 
magnificent in power, scope and furious beauty 
they fondly remembered. In the pounding rain they
set off, the trail affording a degree of shelter under 
a bright green canopy weeping the excess of the downpour. 
In a landscape luxuriantly strewn with boulders 
shed timelessly by the mountain, elderly, shaggy-barked
yellow birch rose to meet the sodden grey clouds and 
the understory of dogwood and fern lapped at the rain.
Gnarled old roots wrapped about rocks, holding aloft
ambitious tree trunks, eager to reach their potential. 

Within a granite crease parting the mountain's side, 
the mountain stream, transformed to a tumultuously 
raging river overflowing its banks, thunders
mightily down the course of its raceway, tumbling 
over and around boulders and wind-fallen trees, gurgling,
frothing, struggling and deafeningly prevailing over 
all obstacles, puny in the mighty turmoil of the 
storm-chased, rain-swollen intemperance of a cataract
spuming along the cleft of the granite gorge,
a tormented torrent of frantic watery power.