NURSLINGS OF THE SKY 



if they could, but have more important 

 matters. Such storms, called cloud-bursts 

 by the country folk, are not rain, rather 

 the spillings of Thor's cup, jarred by the 

 Thunderer. After such a one the water 

 that comes up in the village hydrants miles 

 away is white with forced bubbles from the 

 wind-tormented streams. 



All that storms do to the face of the 

 earth you may read in the geographies, but 

 not what they do to our contemporaries. 

 I remember one night of thunderous rain 

 made unendurably mournful by the house- 

 less cry of a cougar whose lair, and perhaps 

 his family, had been buried under a slide of 

 broken boulders on the slope of Kearsarge. 

 We had heard the heavy denotation of 

 the slide about the hour of the alpenglow, 

 a pale rosy interval in a darkling air, and 

 judged he must have come from hunting 

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