Clouded Dreams (rev)

At dawn I dreamed of wispy clouds –
I had the time to wield and watched
the regimented lines of cirrus racing
north by west; elusive strands of airy
ice spread high across a gravid sky.

Each was less obsessed than speeding
to a destination far-away, constrained in
ever shifting shapes that fled to sea, off
beyond the obfuscating lines of hills
where they belonged as instanced in
my mind enthroned in solemn dignity.

This afternoon the cumulus appeared,
for so their dumpy lumps suggests, a-
hung with sombre clumps descended
from an aerie vastness. Tired cirrhosis
of their leaner selves, they droop about
the mordant blue and plod their way at
least in ordered flow from west to east.

Tonight I’ll dream of stratus clouds and
gentle rain to lift the shroud that binds
the earth in powdered dust, arising in
asthmatic puffs about our weathered
feet; and sleep I will with cirrus wings
to soar above the earthy things that
strive to snare my clouded dreams.
© 2007 I.D. Carswell