Classic Poem

Like a gargantuan screw, the black cloud carves its way through the miniature landscape. A wheat field uncoils like pencil shavings; crows and shingles scatter like graphite dust. Holsteins, hens, and a swayback mare spiral inside the wind's embrace, then plunge like darts into the orchard. In a seizure, the river flees backward. The falls reverse, swallowing their own silver tongue. Tractors, barns, and loops of macadam tangle in a knot. With a metallic shriek, the mountains contract to clench this new dark density.
This is not a headache. It's a ruined kingdom, a pinched world, thumping in your brain. It hides behind a bolted door, at the end of a corridor, deep in a cloud of gray matter. Only in the middle of the night, when the outside realm grows silent, do you hear the hushed roar of that interior landscape. Crippled thunder writhes through the caverns of your ears.
And still, two placid suns continue to shine from your eyes. The hills and valleys of your face settle, smooth and warm as dunes. Your mouth curves into a red canoe for escaping words. Off they drift, unheard, tossed in the bottom of the boat. Their gills flutter like the mouths of mutes. They heave their iridescent bellies against the wood. The thrashing threatens to tip your smile, to drown your false Mona Lisa serenity with rising darkness.