Cloud Cover (Reworked) Poem by Anthony Marriner

I don’t see myself in this.
Waiting for the cloud to part,
for my illumination to begin.
When I’m warm I grasp it, mania ensues.
The need for clarification overwhelms me
I overstep the mark and your recoil begins.
Reciting Oppenheimer, caught in the brightness,
all I can do is wait for the clouds to converge.
You walk away.
Wanting to feel.
Wanting to hope.
Wanting to love.
Cloud cover.

Briefest of glimpses. You see me in there.
Promethean intensity revealing what is alive
but that which can’t persist.
A love shaped by contrast, by shade: eclipsed.
Within my penumbra all is bleak.
I want to emerge and unfurl-to radiate
You remain.
Helping me feel.
Helping me hope.
Helping me love.
Cloud cover.

Red and Black are my world’s only colours.
Falsehoods and deceptions.
Contradictions overshadow
what emerges inside me.
I am at home in Diodati.
Corrosion can be reversed
but its remnants still contaminate.
Acceptance of the haze is the beginning of purity.
You cleanse.
I feel.
I hope.
I love.
Cloud revealed.