The book tells me the cloud is in everything—
yesterday’s thunderhead in today’s tea,
this morning’s fog in the museum walls,
the plume of my breath in the rattlesnake
coiling around a painted peace lily. Look,
my friend says, and the framed stalk of corn
moves me to awe. I am never not in love
with the world and its yellows. The book is
trying to teach me how to see bubbles
glistening in their unicorn purples, floating
unpopped, rendered nearly permanent in paint.
I study a spirit bird made of glass, and my friend
surprises me with her diagnosis. Crows fly through
the window in my chest. The book would say
her blood cancer is also a cloud, but today I can’t
bear the sky and its gentle scholarship of hope.
I stay with the goldenrod shocking the sculpture
of Kansas grasses like a terrestrial memory
of stars. I let myself grieve as hard as the black
door nailed to the wall titled Night Sun. Yes,
it must be true. My friend’s stunning heart was
once rain. Twilight’s navy hem falls on the horizon
and bends the wheat over the mummied field.
Nothing is unhaunted, which means nothing
is alone. A storm gathers like angels crowding
the earth to see the end beginning here.
I love you, I say into the tomb of air between us
and close my eyes so I won’t see the clouds.