Cloud Reader

Fern GZ Carr

Lying on his back, legs bent like upside down V’s,
both hands cupped under his head,
the Cloud Reader is mesmerized by an orange sunset
emblazoned across a pink sky –
a self-imposed paralysis restraining all movement
until the heavens are swathed in blackness;

an addict, he has no alternative but to return at dawn
to indulge his obsession, weather forecasting,
fixating on his drugs of choice:
stratus, cumulus, and cirrus.

He has an uncanny sense of the imminent
as he gauges the severity of potential storms
but he is still a prisoner of his perfectionism
limited by the imperfection
of atmospheric physics.

Friends pester him for prognostications,
more confident in his intuition than in gizmos such as
anemometers, barometers, and hygrometers;
he is their meteorological shaman whose vision quest guides
them through fair and foul, through calm and storm –
he is the Cloud Reader.

FERN CARR is a lawyer, teacher, and member of the League of Canadian Poets who composes and translates poetry in five languages.Recent publication credits include Prairie Fire, The Windsor Review, Magnapoets, Outlook, Soliloquies Anthology, Van Gogh’s Ear, Quantum Leap – The Editor’s Cut, and Poetry USA. She was honored to have the Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate select her poem, “I Am,” as a Poem of the Month.