Maybe a whale,
as Hamlet mused, or a camel or weasel,
more likely a hill,
or many hills (with clouds,
as with us, true singletons are rare).
Mostly we compare them
to silent things, sensing
that thunder is something else
that gets into them—a stone, a god—
and, as for what they want to say,
aeromancy, which presumed to interpret,
never caught on. After all,
clouds weren’t reliable predictors
even of rain, and if they had a message
for us, we guessed,
it would hardly be practical:
clouds are not about
about, showing instead
boundless detail without specificity.
Whales, sure (which might in turn be
blue clouds), but we don’t say
How very like a screwdriver,
or my house, or my uncle, or certainly
how unlike my uncle. For though a blend
of winds we don’t at our level
necessarily feel lends them
amazing motion, that’s not the same as
intention, so failure
is not in question. We wouldn’t say
That cloud is derivative, jejune,
disproportionate, strained, in the wrong place,
or (since they affirm nothing)
That cloud is wrong,
though truly they often bear down
on exactly the wrong moment—that overcast,
is it one cloud or ten thousand
that makes everything feel so gray
forever? From inside, of course—think
of flying through one—
a cloud has no shape. As with us: only
when someone looks hard, or we catch
our reflections, do we solidify as
whale
weasel
fool
and plummet. Large clouds can weigh
more than a 747, yet not one
has ever crashed, so admirably
do they spread their weight, a gift
it is not too much to hope
we could possess, since according to Porchia
we are clouds: If I were stone
and not cloud, my thoughts,
which are wind, would abandon me. O
miracle not miraculous! Everything
we know well
lightens and escapes us, and isn’t that
when we escape? So, just as
Old and Middle English clūd
meant rock or hill, but now
means cloud, really I mean
in exactly the same way that stone
got over being stone
and rose, we rise.