Hot Day With Clouds

Continents merge or slide past each other.
Nerve ends wear themselves to frazzled wisps,
in search of lost connections. An amoeba,
translucent on the sky's glass slide, darkens
the river. Muscled forms reveal how
nuanced light lends body; their doubles
float below, squashed ghosts in sunless grey.
The afternoon builds filmy parapets
from which birds ricochet and heat rebounds.
A mere salt-sprinkle of rain brings release,
tides of sea-cooled air come flooding in.
Then clouds open: an observatory's
split dome ready for raven's-wing night,
the tuning-fork pitch of choirs of stars.