Blue Ridge Rain

Blue Ridge Rain


By: Philip Kent Church




The storm rolls upon the Blue Ridge with muted profundity of thunder

Announcing it’s progress from some, far-off cardinal point, wherein it’s born.

The valleys give clarion call to the winds, swept through, whistled upon summits.

Sounding as nature’s locomotive; climbing the ridge, o’er topping the prominent apexes,

To flow as viscous shreds of overcast inexorably descending toward the forest base.

Then the mountain hollers breathe white misty apparitions from the under-worlds.

Wisping, twirling, rising toward the tangle with bedimmed shrouds of nimbus

Crowned upon the peaks and spines of the highland, paths to heaven.

There the firmament of sky oppresses, heavy, dreary and grey; hovering

Above the creatures, shivered with frigid dew, sheltering below the storm.

Soft, gentile quiet suspended in dank solace throughout the woodlands

Cause rest to nestled nature, waiting in belly-warmed furrows withal. 

Waiting, waiting, waiting for the Sun’s warm break . . . or night’s cruel umbra.

Philip Kent Church
Virginia Tech
WVArts Solitude
Winter 2012