Colonel Johnson's Ride

This morning, rolling through a cloud
Around a mountain on clear ice,
He listens to small hail beat down. The loud
Tick of it sounds almost like rice

Tossed at the windshield. . . . There was a bride
Beside him once, an isolated heart,
Something like water snuggled at his side,
But he’s had rotten fishing from the start.

And she’s behind him, landlocked in their bed.
Wrapped in her own groundcloud of winter dreams,
How does she move? Whom does she wed
While sea-run rainbows, separate, fight the streams

Below and he goes circling down,
Precariously skidding till he stops
Outside the fog drift, sees dawn crown
Like fire on the mountaintops,

And gets out, touchy, near the riverbank?
For beauty, ever since his wedding night
He’s known he has his own hard self to thank.
He’s come alone to sound this water right.