The storms came on heavy and low like peasant women
dragging gray baskets of laundry to the hills where they
flailed their sheets against the rocks until the water ran
clear and each sodden piece was wrung nearly dry.
What remains of clouds now are linty fragments
trailing shadows on the heights so the mountains
become a pack of brindle hounds sleeping in the sun.
©Dana Hughes 10.1.17
I love it. A new image for a storm: peasant laundresses with their baskets. Clouds as lint. Mountains as brindle hounds. Rain as wrung-out wash water. I will never see a storm the same way again. This is just gorgeous. You, madam, are a serious poet. Let’s see Mary Oliver beat that.