Sitting in the middle of a field and watching
the curious white cloud, shaped like a dancing bear or, no,
shaped like a great Titan struggle, and
I know that, even though the cloud seems static, like a
photo in a frame,
it is always moving, always shifting,
but for the life of me, I can't see it.
It is a mountain, made of steel and
frozen in time.
I make up my mind to just
stare
at this mountaincloud -
that looks like Frederick Douglass, now... no, like
Sitting Bull -
sitting and staring and watching this cloud until
at last I can see some change to its shape
or its location in the sky,
but it is concrete, set like stone
above the stand of sycamore on the
edge of the field.
There is a crackling of limbs in the trees to my right
and a flutter,
then a roar of wings
as a hidden murder of crows
takes to flight, sailing out of the trees
in an everlasting armada
and then, they're gone
and two bluebirds fill their absence
with a lovesong that is urgent
and a single dragonfly busies its way
across the field, visiting last summer flowers
beneath the setting sun
in the solemn sky
and that reminds me of the cloud, that mountain of water and mist,
and I turn to see if it has moved
even one inch
but Sitting Bull has left
his last stand
and the cloud is gone
entirely.
