Walking after Tonight’s Showers by Clif Mason

Walking after Tonight’s Showers

I feel the silent desires of clouds.
I’ve always known the words
written in the book of my body

were as much river as stars,
night breezes as hickory boughs.
What is this music I breathe in

with lilac & iris? I am these songs,
shimmering like water
on lady’s mantle, burning

like glowworms seeking mates.
I am bridal veil & moonlight,
nightjars & rain. I am clouds

& the changing songs of clouds.

*

Clif Mason lives with his wife, a visual artist, in a forest in Bellevue, Nebraska, on the forcibly ceded lands of the Umoⁿhoⁿ people. He is the author of the full-length poetry collections, AS JAGUARS DREAMED ON THE EARTH’S DARK FACE (a magical realist novel in verse, Cathexis Northwest Press) and KNOCKING THE STARS SENSELESS (Stephen F. Austin State University Press), as well as three chapbooks. His work has appeared in Rattle, Southern Poetry Review, The Classical Outlook, Poet Lore, and Orbis International Literary Journal (UK), among many others. He is a former Fulbright Fellow to Rwanda, Africa.