We summited the earth’s craggy crust

riding the updraft with the shaggy black crows,

sliding already toward our descent

before the cloud came, first a halo,

bright, then slipping as a hood

over the stiff-necked mountaintop,

suffocating sight with its blank affect,

formless, void, matter for a new terrene,

the old having passed into oblivion

abandoned by the wind and the birds;

nothing for it but to make a shelter

of the holy mystery of transfiguration,

to wait for the sigh of eternity

to pierce the silence with its light.