Three times, cloudsA Poem by Steve NossiterProse about a day where the clouds almost lifted me from the ground, but not quite. A day missed, a day to look forward to.Three times my breath was taken. Three times the butterflies in my stomach
stirred. Three times I caught a glimpse of reality. And my heart took flight. There’s a whole lot of big things in the
world. Most of them are so big you’ll never really see them properly. Like a
field of wheat. Sure you can see down some of the rows, but once you’ve gone
about 3 rows in you can’t really get a good look at the first row anymore. You
just have to remember what it looks like and imagine the size based on that
memory. It’s hard. And the sea. All of the seas. They’re really big. So big,
the earth itself thwarts any effort to see the other side, subtly bending the
edge of the horizon just out of sight. But clouds, well, they are big and they are
right there, hanging over us like whole other worlds, sometimes sharing their
moisture, sheathing it across the land, dropping it down in harsh
discrimination. Changing the light through the entire spectrum and skewing
great shadows across the land. Have you ever looked up at a cloud so big
that it seemed to envelop your entire reality? Three times today that happened.
Once, blue, once grey and once orange. How often does this need to happen
before it seems normal. I’m forty one, nearly forty two and I can’t begin to
imagine how many clouds have captured my moments and breathed fresh inspiration
into my world. If it’s not normalized by now, I don’t think that’ll ever
happen. I really hope it never does. I don’t know if there’s anything
significant about clouds, but they are life to me. It’s as if they are my own
heart floating across the world without the boundaries of my body and bones,
stretching my soul up and out after it like the string of a kite. It’d be nice
to allow my feet to lift of the ground and follow them once in a while. I’d
float above the treetops, over the hills and highways, over the rivers and even
out over the oceans, suspended by my cloud-heart and my elastic soul string. I
wouldn’t spend too much time over the oceans, though. I’m a bit frightened of
them. I’d ask my heart-cloud to steer it’s way back to the shore where I’d
gently alight on the sand, dig in my toes, feel the glassy grains against my
skin and be grateful for the Earth. Three times my feet could have left the
ground today. Could I have? Should I have stopped what I was doing and tried?
Should I have had more abandon? Could I have, even for a moment, felt the
weight on my heels and the balls of my feet succumb to the lift of my soul? Three times I chose to let the moment pass.
All three moments are in history now. Never to be repeated. My feet are planted
firmly on the Earth. All 75kg of my weight contributing to the mass yielding the
world has given to Gravity. But there will be more clouds. They will
come again. They will soar over the treetops, over the hills and highways, over
the rivers and out to the seas, and back again. Again, my heart will take
flight. Maybe, just maybe, then I will follow. © 2019 Steve NossiterAuthor's Note
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