Giles Goodland
The Colour of Sky
The clouds were in a hieroglyphic mood,
built themselves from thoughts to forts
to something stronger.
As we climbed we saw weather systems
lining up, the spangle of distant rain
in an air of just about to happen.
The ruts in the track, through broken
ice-windows, were dotty with tadpoles
turning tail from their gels like sperm,
dashes of frail life suspended
in a medium of pure possibility,
dug in quite deep and quivering
the lens through which we watched them.
People on trail bikes, far below,
circuited a brown fleur-de-lys,
and were sponged away,
quite simply, and a pattern opened.
The clouds burgeoned, blocked anything
but what they were, not rain now
but snow like a change of tense
that snapped us out of context
and stops us dead before a precipice
at the bottom of which we make out
a lake, which in one gust clears to
an ankle-deep tarn beside our feet,
snow blossoming on it and fading
like the blink of an eye, suddenly
simultaneous with me thinking of what
left everything so completely white.
Page(s) 18
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