Cloud Painting (Poetry)

Through empty skies — a faded oatmeal range
fenced only by the far horizon’s rim —
the herding clouds of night some lumbering in
like phantom beasts, unclassified and strange;

they threaten with a sullen, black-eyed stare,
regroup their blending bodies for a charge,
paw silently with misty hooves grown large,
and snort chill dragon-breath on crowded air.

They jostle: each immense and monstrous hide
conjured by imagination’s brush
caught, in the pigmented-purple crush
of shadows moving in from either side;

goaded by impatient, rustling breeze
while bruised hills watch with dark and furrowed brows
anonymous cloud-images that douse
each daylight brand that glimmers through the trees.