Clouded dreams

At dawn I dreamed of wispy clouds,
I had the time to wield and watched
the regimented lines of cirrus racing
from the north by west; elusive
strands of airy ice that spread
up high across the gravid sky.

Each seemed less obsessed than
speeding to a destination far-away,
constrained in ever shifting shapes that lead
somewhere out to sea, an unseen deep
instanced in my mind beyond the lines
of obfuscating hills, off where they belonged,
enthroned in solemn dignity.

This afternoon the clouds are cumulus
for so their shape suggests, dumpy lumps
that hang in sombre clumps descended
from their aerie vastness. A tired cirrhosis
of their former selves, they droop about
the mordant blue and plod their way at very least
in ordered flow from west to east.

Tonight I’ll dream of stratus clouds and gentle rain
to drench the shroud that binds the earth in powdered
dust, rising in asthmatic puffs about our dusty feet;
and sleep I will with cirrus wings to soar above
the earthy things that strive to snare my clouded dreams.
© I.D. Carswell