—for Crazy Cloud
It is raining and sometimes
it is snow. In the gutter
outside my window the stones
are gray and rose, equal parts
dingy and glittersome.
Across the way, the spruce tree
is more blue than green.
Its trunk is crooked. Its boughs
uneven. On a day such as this
it is so human to want to seek warmth,
to want to lean whatever in us
is crooked and blue toward another’s
crooked blueness and find
some communion there. So human
to want to say something true,
perhaps about how fragile
this life is, perhaps about love,
but these truths are like
the simplest stones,
changing color each time
we try to describe them.
Easier to say it is raining
and sometimes it is snow.
Though already the clouds
are clearing. Already the spruce
gathers late morning sun
in fat droplets that hang
under needles. I am walking
around the things I do not wish
to say as much as those that I do.
Like he’s gone. Like it hurts.
Like it’s fragile, this life, though he was
strong. Like he was never ours.
What an elegant tribute! So much of the emotion is embedded in that ending, that admission that it is hard to say, like walking around things, which is what the poem does so well. Though I have to say without those details of conflicting elements, the poem would not contain the power it does, that emotion unleashed so beautifully at the end. I don’t know who Crazy Cloud was, but the blessing of that spirit is distilled in your poem. More than lovely.
Hey dear David, did you know Mike Adams? From Lafayette. I wonder where you might have crossed paths. He was a stunning poet, one of the driving forces behind Turkey Buzzard, one of the Fire Gigglers, and gosh, he was just a mighty fine man.
Can’t wait to see you on Thursday, r
No, sadly, didn’t know him, but I did meet him in Telluride. Looked at his site earlier today and am glad to know him through your fine poem.