The face in the cloud speaks to me.
“I see you down there, grinding away.
I prefer floating. I prefer drenching.”
O Spring, the imagination runs wild!
A fine line separates fancy and insanity,
like I don’t know. Now it fucking rains.
The face in the cloud, darker now,
chides me for forgetting my umbrella.
But no rain was forecast, cloud.
“Terrible that, but I’m unpredictable.
And I deliver good water to everything.
But you are guilty of blue-sky thinking.”
This cloud speaks a funny language.
I am doing my best to translate it.
But it sounds nothing like the written words.
You won’t live forever, I think.
In time you’ll empty out yourself.
Your face will dissipate; your rains will end.
The cloud drains its bladder at last.
Soaking wet, I feel resentment toward it.
The face in the clouds winks at me.
Just go away, I grunt to myself.
“I can hear you, man,” the cloud says.
“If you want me to go, I’ll go.”
Too much. I moved on. I wasn’t about
to converse with a cloud. I’m not out
of my mind yet. Give it time, but not yet.
I pass a man with a big umbrella.
He has a face like a wildebeest, sparsely bearded.
Not a handsome specimen.
“Don’t talk to that cloud,” I say, pointing.
He stares at me, grunts, and stomps his galosh.
“I mean it,” I say, “that cloud has a serious problem.”
Salvatore Difalco is a Sicilian Canadian poet and short story writer
lives in Toronto, Canada. His poems and stories have appeared in
many journals.
Euphony Journal 