Nine—Alchemy

All month the clouds stacked high as soon as the sun set behind Cherty, and the purple, orange, pink—a hue turned down here, brightened there—changed minutes, but the clouds were ships sitting in the afternoon like people have said, they didn’t move.

By morning, we had a creek of mist above Foot Creek diffuse up the ridge to our home. Couldn’t see until the fog settled back and held together into creek again. Diffused creek, this was our breath until the sun got high enough to dissipate our breathing. Then the clouds rolled over the skylight fast.

There were the two afternoons at Cliff Tops, us sitting in the rocks, the sun’s low light shading the backs of the Smoky Mountains into bison heading to the valleys where the clouds had gone. At Myrtle Point in the morning, they moved up.

Found them weeks later stacked above the pelican ocean. We were on the bridge to Eastpoint at the crest. That night lightning went off, bombs inside the clouds we could not hear for the ocean waves, us on the sand, and far away, one strike, then another into the water.