Ode to Clouds
By Erika Rench
Streams of light
rivulets of gold
I
will name a son
after you:
pileus,
stratus,
cirrus.
My daughter,
thundering
castellanus
foreboding
bursting apart
into
virga,
falls
in slivers
down to earth
I
am the founder
of the cloud
appreciation society,
your first love,
teen angst
in my dried throat
fixed gaze
eyes
burning
upon your cumulonimbus
Offer me
just a nibble
of your glory,
even
your mediocris will do.
But
O!
your gaudy splendor
truly revealed
when mere mortals
see you
advancing
and rush
indoors.
you
take a century
to reach
me
Oh mamma!
Your warm air
rising,
I
Am supine
in wonder
You
are the bread crumbs
of a hungry
Zeus
that mortals
dare
to follow.
Stretched tight
on
the horizon
you
are the horseman
who brings
a message
of good
news
across a parched land.
You
rein
in the stratosphere,
the troposphere
deciding
fates,
carrying
rain
on your back,
snow
in your bosom
a mackerel sky
three
days dry.
I
find stories
in
your folds:
leaping fish
a circus
of misfits
turtles
riding
the backs of serpents.
Then,
eyes close
and
I
dream of flying
in a pink
pool
of light
as darkness
chases
its tail.
There,
betrothed
to the moon
for even just
one
night
I
see you,
swirling,
changing your future
being born
again
and again.
Erika Rench is a writer, educator and program coordinator for Project PM with the Hood River County School District. For six years she has been a teaching artist in creative writing with Arts In Education programs in the Columbia River Gorge and Bend, Oregon. She is a freelance writer whose work appears in Columbia Gorge Magazine.