in the shadows of a cloud

Here's a wonderful Sandra Cisneros poem, about the interconnected nature of everything that's around us ...

... picture is of the magnificent Star Magnolia, which sits on the edge of our small, tenemental back-garden:


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
crossing 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 Maria  tattooed on the hairless arm
of a boy in dowtown 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 blueberries 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.

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Sandra Cisneros (1954 - )

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