Four Clouds 

It has been a cold April, the kind 
of spring you don't walk out in.  Blue-red 
camellias decay and fall, collect behind 
the fence and decompose.  Overhead 

a chilled moon rides into 3 P.M., 
gray random bubble of the night 
floating through the afternoon, a prism 
in reverse, swallowing the light. 

Easter's late this year.  Four clouds 
rise and gather, move across the sun, 
uncertain, slow as old relinquished gods 
flowing into a vacuum -- last of the leashmen. 

Holy Thursday: a high of thirty-eight. 
The failing sky is absolutely slate.

 


Poem, Copyright 2001, Carol Frith Dead Heat 
Image Copyright 2001, Pamela Moore Dionne


Carol Frith co-edits Ekphrasis. A 4-time finalist for the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, her work has or will appear in Many Mountains Moving, Clackamas, Chariton Review, Macguffin, Perihelion, The Formalist, Poetry New York, Sundog

Four Clouds is an English sonnet (14 lines, rhyme scheme: abab, cdcd, efef, gg).

Pamela Moore Dionne studied painting through the University of Alaska Extension in Ketchikan, Alaska and with Mel Wallace at Olympic College.  She is the founder and managing editor of Literary Salt ( www.literarysalt.com).
 
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