Horizontal

it’s easy to stop seeing what’s on the horizon

people in the valley don’t really believe in it

what summer makes seem no less than a mountain

winter shows as it is no more than a hill

from my front porch a sudden influx of sky

after the leaves fall look it’s snowing

the flakes come to settle in their multitudes

well into the evening lightness piling up

between the trees no more omnivorous earth

but a colony of the clouds pale and puritanical

against which the individual trunks stand out

an absent crowd dreaming

together underground

and after my own sleep i rise and look again

on the underside of a snowy limb

a gray squirrel is walking upside-down