Cloud Boy
a poem
Artwork: Mural by: SETH
there was a time
when we both tried to
touch the sky
our eyes to the ether
but we were grounded
to earth
and you imagined
there must be a way
to live in a cloud,
so you made a book
and we collected pictures
of the sky that you pasted
a cut-out heaven,
while I made-up stories
from the changeable chaos—
a dragon's maw wide and about to
breathe fire against a giant with
its club raised and ready...but
there's a boat lost in a scudding
white sea heading for a rocky
promontory and—
while I spoke
you were miles away, except
you'd reached for my hand
an anchor
to your dreams, then
we stopped
hanging out in each other's
backyards, no more
gazing at skies
those lazy tracings of clouds
as if we could conjure
other worlds, no
life contracted, the sky
its mysteries reduced
to a barometer of the weather
the clouds
I glimpsed more in passing
as I did you, but I saw
the drawings you taped
to your window—
the piece of blackened paper
punctured with pinprick holes
that filtered the light like stars,
and the clouds
painted and drawn, small mirrors
you held up to the cosmos—
until the day
the sky upturned
to become a roiling sea
clouds amassed like waves
and the colour, as if
they'd been shaded
a charcoal night,
I saw you standing
on the pavement, your bike
tossed to the verge
head tilted, body rigid
and there was that look
I knew all too well
on your face
a longing that sliced
to bone
because you were no longer
here, you were there
in those clouds that I swear
you loved more than being
stranded on this earth,
and time meant nothing
as I went to stand beside you
without speaking, reaching
for your hand,
“Got you,” I whispered
and your fingers gripped mine,
all I needed to know
that you'd find your way
back from having lived
inside a cloud,
however briefly
© Angela Jooste 2017