The Tangled Branch Discussion Forums

It forms
in a pocket of blue
to the east.
I watch it kindle, grow
so unlike the clouds back home
that roll in from the west
in human form, 
muscular, two-toned,
steeped in the strut and glide
of an Atlantic wind. 

Nothing about it is familiar
and I’m no meteorologist
of the heart 

but something in its lightness
makes me want to dance
in the hen gegin 
before the faded tiles,
the AGA
and the rain outside,
and you in a white linen dress
that billows at the hem
as we step and spin
and fall to rest –

But that was then.
Here, a cloud forms
in a pocket blue 
tableau of sky
and lingers there,
solitary, almost still,
uncertain
whether or not to settle.

Fabulous!
Exactly how I will write poetry in my next life.

Luke, I love so many things about this poem!

I admit I do have trouble with the setting—it's all in the present tense, but you also have a then, and an exciting now and an unsettled now—but the emotional connections you draw with clouds, falling off the ends of lines like "grow/so unlike the clouds back home", and the musicality of S3 (like "rain outside", "faded tiles") keep sending me back to the beginning to enjoy the read again.

Thanks for this!

Jackie

Thanks both, much appreciated.
Jackie, it's a moment of reminiscence set it the present, inspired by the cloud. The aim was to slightly break down linear time but i hoped also for it to be intelligible. I'll ponder.

Thanks again

Luke