The Evolution of Clouds

Memories play out,

slow, mutable clouds shifting

subtly across the expanse of blue years,

becoming truer than what was, like paintings do.

Was there ever a sunflower more real

than Van Gogh’s, or a chair?

These days, we’ve become

frank and thorough videophiles,

recording digital truths that,

taken together frame by frame, add up

to less than our sums, sorely

lacking the clarity of nuance:

the sweetness of Williams’ icebox plums,

the call of Oliver’s wild geese, the way Proulx’s

Rancher Croom rises on air like a cork in a bucket of milk.