Peak of Mount Rainier. Courtesy of Good Free Photos.
but only I could see them.
Others saw a bank of clouds
on the horizon, potential rain. I saw
the Cascade Range,
my mother’s face
face toward them, lit
by their snow light,
and her mother’s face
who had to learn to love them
after years of living flat.
Did she imagine, on some foggy days,
there was nothing taller out there
than the dike she knew in Friesland,
and the waves the dike held back?