The cloud
that almost but doesn’t quite look like clip-art waves
a smear of titanium white, thin on blue canvas
your mother’s mercury thermometer.
The meager supper cloud.
The cloud
IT pulls along on a string. Eraser-shaped cloud. Cloud
of disintegrating book pages.
Water-labyrinth cloud. Lazy-river cloud.
The cloud
shaped like the lips of your first kiss
which taught color to the dirty city.
Smokestack cloud. Airplane cloud
and not one fatality.
Cloud
which comes to your sadness like a wet dog. Necktie cloud.
Mirror cloud.
Cloud
of speeches and afterbirths. Cloud
after which you were named, bound in leather, and sold as a dictionary.
Square cloud of clay. Pixel cloud. Cataract cloud.
Cloud of gnats
which you took for the soul of your grandfather
mist buried bones and the red leaves.
Cloud
which returns in bursts of brightness like hyacinths
and rides the measure of your life.
All the lungs linking you cloud
by cloud
to the wet flight of other bodies.