In Terms of Clouds
Altocumulus string together the white
and transparent vertebrae of the blue. . . .
I stare off into nothing, and wonder if
this wasn’t always my true occupation,
one for which I showed exceptional promise
daydreaming through the long division
of afternoon in terms of clouds
whose sky-scrawl resembled mine
with my Sheaffer fountain pen across
pages in our Palmer Method Workbooks . . .
the only assignment I took to heart
to name the lost continents on a chalky,
midday moon, locate the misplaced
footprints of infinity.
Had I kept this
in mind, I might have dodged the academic
jabs and sucker-punches that threw off
the rhythm in my heart like a scratch,
a skip in an old LP—it might have
ignored the gritos rising through
the night, let alone the fog erasing
the magnolias, blotting out the starlight
on which all our theories and beliefs
are hung?
I stretch out on my chaise longue,
giving in to another hour of inconsequence,
insouciant as cumulus floating by like the lost
fragments of imagination—those castles in Spain
let's say, before thinking again of great Yeats
who suffered as much or more than the rest of us
regardless?
I have no grounds for griping and
should be grateful to just doze with my grey cat,
the two of us exhaling toward some streaks
of cirrostratus which look as if a moving hand
had written out our fates, thought better of it,
and rubbed them out again. . . .
Christopher Buckley’s Prezzatura is published by Lynx House Press, 2025. His work was selected for Best American Poetry 2021, and he is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, two NEA grants, a Fulbright Award in Creative Writing, and four Pushcart Prizes. He has edited over a dozen critical collections and anthologies, most recently, Naming the Lost: The Fresno Poets—Interviews & Essays.
Innisfree 42
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