A Poem a Day (679): Clouds

 
Clouds
 
You take the clouds sometimes,
revisit ambition in a fog-blown glass,
drift among the old ones tugging your soles,
their roots deep, too far away.
 
There is echo in the moon, the spill of its rays,
motion in the wide ocean that empties out.
 
The book lies closed where you set it down.
Idle. Your stories ask to be read,
yet you leave them in a darkened room.
 
Spirits of ages hunt the huntress, glisten the
hours of light cascades, the wretched waiting,
for you are drawn, imagined, talked upon,
but you are not how you are sketched.
 
Time ticks. Not so eager, not so slow.
This background shifts. Awaken movement.
He is at liberty, and yet he is not.
He lives, and yet he cannot sink inside it.

On the surface, a simmer,
the circular line invisible.
 
The elephant follows the herd, wise, sturdy.
He will follow til the end of his days,
rest with the sick, mourn upon the dead.
 
Here, we test our own mortality,
stripped of youth’s belief that we are stone.
 
Vickie Johnstone, August 11, 2024