The Poetry Show: Clouds

 

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

 

I Really Don't Know Clouds. At All.

 

 

Sandra Cisneros, Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, Sara Teasdale, Sara James, Phillis Levin, Joni Mitchell? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgtLZCe-GSM)

Broadcast Wednesdays, 10 AM on player.enlightenradio.org

Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case

This Episode Recorded April22, 2026

Cloud

by Sandra Cisneros

Before you became a cloud, you were an ocean, roiled and murmuring like a mouth.

You were the shadow of a cloud crossing over a field of tulips.

You were the tears of a man who cried into a plaid handkerchief.

You were a sky without a hat.

Your heart puffed and flowered like sheets drying on a line.

And when you were a tree, you listened to trees and the tree things trees told you.

You were the wind in the wheels of a red bicycle.

You were the spidery Maria tattooed on the hairless arm of a boy in downtown 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 finger nail.

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 blueberries 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.

 

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