I’d like to describe
clouds instead

of people
their increase

up and out
blossoming

like the drawings
of William Kentridge

unfurling their subjects
ghosts posing

for portraits
as if they were

company
to cowboys

and the sunsets
they ride toward

to make sense
of the hurt

people put on
one another.

What is hate
but recognition?

When the opera
house arrived

a wealth
of baser music

came with it:
virtuosic noise

tomatoes / roses.
Singers afraid

of their audience.
On the front page

of the New York Post
a model holds a gun

to a man’s jaw.
She’s smiling.

They’re in Moscow
on a runway.

We thrive
on contradiction.

In Florida,
in New York,

in California,
unarmed boys

are shot.
Men are jailed.

Clouds never intend.
Clouds are instruments

of great destruction.
Take the pine-bark beetle,

who reddens
the evergreens,

who lays her eggs
beneath the bark

of ancient pines,
and makes of them

kindling for fires.
All at once,

millions of beetles
sailed over the mountains

in the form of a cloud.
It was probably beautiful.