Cloud

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. 
                                                                                         -Thich Nhat Hanh 

Before you became a cloud, you were an ocean, roiled and 
murmuring like a mouth. You were the shadows of a cloud cross- 
ing over a field of tulips. You were the tears of a man who cried 
into a plaid handkerchief. You were the sky without a hat. Your 
heart puffed and flowered like sheets drying on a line. 

And when you were a tree, you listened to the trees and the tree 
things trees told you. You were the wind in the wheels of a red 
bicycle. You were the spidery Mariatattooed on the hairless arm 
of a boy in dowtown Houston. You were the rain rolling off the 
waxy leaves of a magnolia tree. A lock of straw-colored hair 
wedged between the mottled pages of a Victor Hugo novel. A 
crescent of soap. A spider the color of a fingernail. The black nets 
beneath the sea of olive trees. A skein of blue wool. A tea saucer 
wrapped in newspaper. An empty cracker tin. A bowl of blueber- 
ries in heavy cream. White wine in a green-stemmed glass. 

And when you opened your wings to wind, across the punched- 
tin sky above a prison courtyard, those condemned to death and 
those condemned to life watched how smooth and sweet a white 
cloud glides. 


“Cloud” by Sandra Cisneros