Brook J. Sadler

There is for me no place
that does not strobe black and white
like this mountain storm
that stamps the fir tree upon the night
in silhouette inked by stark, unyielding lightning strike,
no place absent the cool and haunting cloud
of memory that in the dark remains unseen
but when illumined by electric flash
appears immediate and hovering—
great grey accumulations filling the space
with expressions that shift
like love and anger across a face—
no place without the negative,
that photographic reversal of light,
no place without the inversion
of present and past,
no place that does not beckon,
does not command,
the courage to love again—
that fierce, fast-moving, cold, and necessary wind.