Cloud Cover
There once were limpid skies
contrails ice-cut in cubic azure
as if by skaters' blades
Dresden, Delft, and artisan
blue of bird's-eye speedwell
on gifted days of cloth-of-gold
Now scars crosshatch the heavens
each marred blank page of Grace
a grim rebuff, transcribing panic
Manic, lost-in-the-ether scrawl
whose turbid steam depicts
humanity's crushed vertebrae
It filters wide and stretches long
in jaundiced bruised-grey shrouds
screening a bewildered sun
The eye for paradise grows blind
remembered light is our epiphany
even as we breathe the chemistry
of oblivion...
