Staying Power #155: "What One Cloud Said to Another"
An original poem
How’d I get so lucky as to be in this world with you?
As we start Thanksgiving week in the US, I offer you the gift of this poem-in-progress. Wherever you live, whatever your circumstances, know that I’m grateful for you and what you bring to this world.
Note: This poem’s formatting is best viewed on The Raft website on a larger device. If you’re reading an email, you might wish to click here.
WHAT ONE CLOUD SAID TO ANOTHER
Phyllis Cole-Dai
You can’t see the currents you ride
Strange rivers of wind
Over the curve of the earth
But look down
At your shifting shape
The changing shadow you cast
On sun-washed valleys and plains
Here there is darkness
Now
There is light
When the emptiness inside
Grows heavy and cold
Do not fight your descent
As rain
The gravity of loss
The tumbling down
This too is the life of you
This misting
This dripping
This sprinkling
This storm
Brings you back to the ground
Where in the sun’s heat
You once rose to form
In time (I’ve found)
Our going up
Becomes
Our coming down
That we might bless the dust of earth
And through our blessing
Lift it up again
To float across the sky
The Gentle Nudge
No free Raft events due to the Thanksgiving holiday.
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Lovely poem, Phyllis! That spacing really gives the effect of clouds scooting across the sky. And I particularly love your opening lines:
You can’t see the currents you ride
Strange rivers of wind
Over the curve of the earth
Along with that "gravity of loss." Oh, yes, oh, yes. Thank you!
I love this poem and am so very, very grateful to have received it this morning. Life and death truly are on the same string- Your words resonate deeply “….our going up becomes our coming down…that we might bless the dust of earth... and through our blessing lift it up again… to float across the sky. Phyllis, thank you . . .