Andrew Hudgins

The afternoon clouds dcutted by

so rapidly they didn't look

like anything, or anything

to me.  Maybe my wife, walking

beside me, saw a camel,

or the arched back of a weasel, but

I don't see how.  It was just one wisp

chasing, at intervals, another eastward,

gray and white whipped before

a front like yesterday's and the day's

before that, each intimating rain,

and then not coming across with it,

like high school girls I'd say to my wife,

just for the snort of amused derision, 

if I had seen anything there in the sky 

that had looked like anything to me.

And it's her garden we worry about,

the coneflowers drying in the heat,

the new and not-cheap weeping beech

crisping expensively at the corner 

of the garage, so if she'd seen anything 

--a small dog, an elongated horse,

a cloud that looked like it was pregnant

with images or meaning, she'd not

have kept it to herself, but shared.  

 

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