Who are you, austere little cloud

drawn to this page, this sky in the dream

I'm having of meeting you here?



There should be a word that means "tiny sky."

Probably there is, in Japanese.

A verbal Polaroid of a Polaroid.



But you're the sky, not a cloud.

I'm the cloud. I gather and dissipate,

but you are always here.



Leave a message for me if you can.

Break a twig on the lilac, or toss

a few dried petals on the hood of my car.



May neither of us forsake the other.

The cloud persists in the darkness,

but the darkness does not persist.