Ignoring Clouds

Clouds come and go, sky incantations.

You might say they hide life’s secret, a slow drift

converging, dispersing.

Five shapes in two minutes,

butterfly to peony, now a pagoda.

I recall the ancient line: clouds are not clouds.

How many thoughts to earn such wisdom? Right, wrong,

no way to know—each day science invents from nothing,

saying something new. Through all this fog,

I still don’t understand my body, why night’s pains

vanish in daylight. Why in my dreams

the same dead classmate reappears.

Perplexing! Like seeing a butterfly, startled

at its patterns’ splendor, or astonished

by a flight of swans, in their array

more order than an honor guard.