How I Grew My Cloud

I went to the swamp where the green things lean
and the mud goes glup and the frogs turn queen,
where the moss hangs low like an old man's beard
and the fog comes creeping, soft and weird.

I brought one pickle jar, shiny and wide,
with a speck of old pickle still stuck inside.

I tiptoed down by the cypress knees
and whispered, "Fog, won't you come with me, please?"

The fog said nothing. Fog never does.
It just sat there being a silvery fuzz.

So I scooped up a puff with a swoop and a spin
and snapped the lid shut with the swamp-smell in.

At home I placed it beside my bed
with a sock for a pillow and a thimble for bread.

I poked three holes in the lid up top
so it could breathe out a tiny plop.

I breathed on the glass till the jar turned white.
"That's condensation," I told it. "Good night."

Each morning I fed it a spoonful of dew,
a blink from the window, a hiccup or two,
and songs about love in my smallest voice:

"You may rain if you want. You may float if you choose."

I told it my secrets. The small and the true.

The cloud grew round as a biscuit bun.
It fogged up the jar and swallowed the sun.

"You're too big now," I said. "You need sky.
You need blue room and birds going by."

So I opened the jar at the top of the stair
and my cloud rolled out in its underwear.

It wobbled once. It sneezed out rain.
It kissed my cheek through the windowpane.

Then up it climbed with a fluff and a shroud,
my swamp-fog, love-song, pickle-jar cloud.

I tell it the things that are hard to say.
It rains for a minute.

Then floats away.