Clouds......

Cloud

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. 

                                                                                         -Thich Nhat Hanh 

Before you became a cloud, you were an ocean, roiled and 

murmuring like a mouth. You were the shadows of a cloud cross- 

ing over a field of tulips. You were the tears of a man who cried 

into a plaid handkerchief. You were the sky without a hat. Your 

heart puffed and flowered like sheets drying on a line. 

And when you were a tree, you listened to the trees and the tree 

things trees told you. You were the wind in the wheels of a red 

bicycle. You were the spidery Mariatattooed on the hairless arm 

of a boy in downtown Houston. You were the rain rolling off the 

waxy leaves of a magnolia tree. A lock of straw-colored hair 

wedged between the mottled pages of a Victor Hugo novel. A 

crescent of soap. A spider the color of a fingernail. The black nets 

beneath the sea of olive trees. A skein of blue wool. A tea saucer 

wrapped in newspaper. An empty cracker tin. A bowl of blueber- 

ries in heavy cream. White wine in a green-stemmed glass. 

And when you opened your wings to wind, across the punched- 

tin sky above a prison courtyard, those condemned to death and 

those condemned to life watched how smooth and sweet a white 

cloud glides. 

❤

Sandra Cisneros