Bitterroot Mountains, Early Spring Crystals melt into a bead of water the droplet tearing itself free slides slowly down my ankle, colder than the snow that spawned it. Pogonip grips the air, creating frozen fog-crystals that gleam and sparkle, as they dance-float down, up, around, blending into a thin veneer of frozen, slick glass, glazing surfaces, twigs, branches, rocks, thoughts. Breath, floating, thickens, forming a ghostly vapor, so that I walk with a frozen fog-cloud eyelashes, mustache, beard crystallized, a sparkle-headed, grim fog-ghost. Snow is crusted over, thick enough to cut blocks from it, and where I do not crunch through it, I stand upon the Pogonip ice crust, and walk like a very old man. Thick ragged gray dome surrounds a smooth white carpeted world. Tree limbs no longer spread to the sun, but droop, saddened by twinkling ice, cracking and popping as though in the hearth, but not of warmth snapping, from the heavy purity of cold. I would scream, not to be heard, to relive the tense, quiet ominousness, but I fear the sound would surround me, and solidify, so that I would hear it wherever I looked, or perhaps it would shatter this crystal world and I, and all about me, would dance-float like crystal shards in a gray abyss. Copyright © --LeRoy Webb 2000 LeRoy Webb- Is Poetry Editor of "Pogonip- the eZine" And a fine poet in his own right, to read more of LeRoys works, and other fine poets- I strongly recommend you visit -Pogonip the eZine- the url is attached below. ml...db