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CONNECTING CLOUDS AND STONES
Clouds are born as abstract notions,
Spawned secretly, a fusion of temperature and moisture.
They are ephemeral yet brim with certainty,
With passion and with tales to tell.
Swathed in their bulbous cottony outfits,
They have difficulty deciding on their
Exact size or how to position themselves.
Each is so much like the others you have trouble selecting
Which bewitching siren you’d like to bed down with.
On the beach below, stones join the pageant,
Sporting individual shapes and colors.
Look, this one is heart-shaped and could almost be beating.
It blends café au lait and a flash of russet.
Another, sculptured like a sharp-edged prism,
Parades a band of raven-black across its blue-gray body.
Still another looks like a piece of bark, grooved and textured
But offers only the adamant inflexibility of stone.
Sitting off by itself, indifferent, a spherical, scooped-out
"Indian paint pot" waits for some artist.
For cabalists and scholars intent on existential perplexities,
Clouds and stones offer mystical conceits.
Some believe God makes every thing and every where.
You could make a case for this:
What these stones have decided to become.
Stones and clouds may even feel.
Perhaps they converse in some precocious language
They alone can understand.
Donald Everett Axinn
From Walking Through the Night
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