Poetry about Clouds

Clouds

Somewhere north of the valley
the great sheet of the sky gathers unmade. Billows
of linen tumble over linen and
sing praises of mornings too frantic to
spend smoothing. It’s as if the saints just rolled
over and realized that it was an hour
later than they thought it was, with just enough time to make it without being actually late, so they leapt, like children, through the bedroom of the heavens, tossing aside cumulous pillows into corners for all the laymen below to see.

There’s only ever just enough time;
not that we need to rush, you see—
we think we can start early, plot all our moves, but
in the end the bell of the sun rings bright and we know
that Providence knew the whole time
that the heavens must be flung in a white pile
to sooth the so-called ordered earth.

– Betsy Brown

A Cloudy Day

Children scamper hurredly
from homework and video games,
and workers from their paper-shredding duties,
for the heavenly hosts parade of recognizable shapes.

In the treehouse I built as a boy
not a single giraffe or horse barreled by unnoticed,
or faces of famous people
identified by peculiar furrows and laugh lines.

Once I saw Churchill’s bald chubby head,
but by the time I went inside to point out the obvious,
Lincoln and Rita Coolidge moved in
as if it was their neighborhood.

Jesus paraded, too, about once a week,
sometimes alone and sometimes with others taking notes;
once he was doing the backstroke in a blue pool
surrounded by dark billows of pharisaic mumbles.

– Chuck Collins