A Heavy Weight to Carry
… the average cumulus cloud — often called a fair-weather cloud — can weigh around 1.1 million pounds, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
Very foggy this morning.
The road outside my home is slick.
There’s a lot of water in the air and leaves are budding.
I should feel filled with the life of spring,
and I do but it is very foggy this morning.
West of here marshes and lakes have gone into the sky
bringing east with them the salt of winter roads and the skins
of snakes shed among autumn’s reeds and the smoke of
old man cigarettes coal burning power plants and sewage.
This is what water does. It comes to us across dry land.
These are fair weather clouds come down to earth
having taken the moisture of all life they pass over
having taken the loneliness of neon city lights
having swept over the ocean where the salt of tears
was taken from them and distilled
to flow fresh over where the last cloud had passed.
We should get together this evening if you can see your way.
It’s a heavy burden, I know, when the words don’t quite
match the exchange of vision and compassion Earth has for us.
It’s a little hard to see beyond the next plantings or harvestings.
But that’s nothing when we have each other to hold.
We are growing where the seeds have settled and the fog
wraps around us with deadly serious compassion, and
it is still early in the spring where the clouds flow forever.
Jared Smith is the author of seventeen books of poetry. His work has appeared in hundreds of domestic and international journals and anthologies as well as on NPR’s Spoken Word series. Additionally, his poems have been adapted to stage in two multi-media productions. He has served on the staffs of The New York Quarterly, Home Planet News, and Turtle Island Quarterly, and as a two-time Guest Editor at The Pedestal Magazine. He lives in Maryland, where he is a host of the Wilde Reading Series in Columbia.
