I Wanted To Dream Of The Life Of Clouds Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

I WANTED TO DREAM OF THE LIFE OF CLOUDS

I wanted to dream of the life of clouds
the scurrying of leaves in small vortexes
illuminations of

the rose red rainbows singular in the world
to flow near stars and to become that silver
or the quince green

indistinguishable from moonlight
in the clouds the crystals freeze
into half and quarter rainbows

composing their own music
and the birds flow too
and dream so that then

I am dreaming of clouds and within that
the clouds dream of birds
the birds dream of

who knows perhaps the snows
the snows dream of descending
into the vast gardens

of the first earth oh I wanted to dream
I wanted to dream of the history of clouds
to be done with the history of earth

to turn into the sweeping rains
and over vast seas
to dissolve

to be mist on the faces of little children
and to disappear
into opalescent hemispheres

so far from here

to become the breath of angels
and to know
life is fleeting as all poets know

but the clouds do not know
in their motion what is going
what is going away

who is going away
they are themselves
incapable of tears

of wrenching themselves from the years accumulated
I want to sleep in the orchards where the pink clouds
descend

becoming the flowering of the trees
and to float petal like to earth
and then to swirl upwards suddenly

mary angela douglas 22 may 2017