Afloat in a pool of July sunshine and mesmerized

by waterfall’s pounding cascade onto granite slabs

below, there came a day when suddenly she stood up

in the stream of all of it, locked her freckled eyes

onto spruce treetops a mile up the mountain and

like an ecstatic animal burst into such laughter, such

utter freedom from the past and its earthquakes

of grief, now gifted by purity of water and rock,

wild wind and sturdy cliff, that three hawks circling

high overhead ceased their incessant hunt for this moment

becoming points of reverent stillness, love’s witnesses

in the great sky of her hard-won joy.