A child looked out the kitchen window.
A resolute gale from the west verged on visible,
yet underneath thick overcast, compact black clouds
scudded from the east, spilling rain without end.
How could they sail this way? Perhaps the wind
noticed and wondered too for it blasted them harder,
slipstreamed itself, and beyond the horizon’s
capacity to hold, broke through the eastern leaden,
escaping fast and high into open sky, surely corporeal
where the air grew cold. It waned at last and coalesced
as a colossal atomic cloud, startling white,
but not seizing all the gust, which rose again and again
until a triple decked mushroom stood higher than air
had ever flown before. The piercing blue was pierced
by that crystal fountain of primal snow. Perfect,
it could not hold. A summit flake slipped and more,
an embryo avalanche that would surely destroy
everything below. It must have been days later,
surroundings hot, and dry except for the sticky sweat
on his brow. Voices of searchers could be heard,
their cautious footstep sounds chattered that the house
was now just a kindling pile. They would assume
he was dead just as the flies he felt strolling his face
surely did. There were a lot, and buzzing everywhere.
He is a man awake. He will not open his eyes.

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J.S. MacLean is an emerging poet from Calgary Alberta who writes on a variety of subjects. He has been seeking publication for just under two years and has been published in a variety of print and online journals, most recently in The Battered Suitcase and soon to appear in Feathertail. He often draws on personal experience.