For Karen Croft
At eighty I began to notice clouds
no longer as mere omens, metaphors
or even as bearers of blessed rain
but in themselves: each one in a cloud-rich sky
a creation to be climbed in the mind’s eye
as an angel would an Alp, or like an elm
humbling us with its vertical majesty
and so unlike the next majestic elm
Listen to those discords that their leaves
make in the wavering wind, no longer just
a flat susurrus, more like a symphony
or a symphonic tune-up at a concert
cavernous with echoes and allusions
it could take a lifetime to interpret
From: Walking on Darkness, Sheep Meadow Press, forthcoming.