The Strange Parade Poem by Jenny Kalahar

The Strange Parade



Clouds—
floats
lashed to an invisible team of wind whorls—
they are summer's strange parade,
displaying,
circus-baiting for an audience of tree
for waving, applauding leaves
still moist from earthbound fogswirl,
still refreshed from their long night

A boy half asleep among green corn,
half hears roaring crowds upon the breeze
sees the possible above his head
hears cheering from westbounding geese.
He feels he's up there floating, too
viewing fields beneath
that separate into corn and soy,
into playgrounds for imaginary beasts

In a Foreign Country, windmill sails slap
yearning to bring down sky,
never tiring of the struggle
from an orbit close to ground.
They creak with long, throaty appeals,
calling to the clouds like lovers,
reaching just so high and then descending
as still the strange parade floats on

Shapes like elephant and tiger
are cageless animals set free
charging in slow motion
to the thrill of calliope.
I will fly myself up high by kite
to ride a sunset lion's back
and hold on to his kite-string mane,
the strangest member of that pack

Now night is threatening with its blackness
creeping from the brim of Earth,
the boy has risen from his cornfield
shaking out his shirt of dirt.
Trees are sighing, sighing, sighing
shadowed leaves quake slow and weep,
I am leaping from my lion knowing that
behind the moon, clouds yet float on in sleep

The Strange Parade
Thursday, August 1, 2019
Topic(s) of this poem: imagination,sky
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