THE CLOUDWATCHER

I saw a sultan's palace in the clouds
With minarets gold-dipped in setting sun;
Its lapis-paved bright stairways spanned the sky,
Then fell away as evening's light was done.

I watched a fronded bird of paradise
Become a crystal dancer in the blue;
She spun with graceful lacy cirrus veils
That trailed behind her where the jet-stream flew.

I found a lion in the cumulus
Whose mane was billowed on the rising air;
But he grew like a spreading mushroom cloud
That caved in on itself in dark despair.

There was an angel, borne on latticed wings
High in the cirro-stratus flow;
And he became a silver unicorn;
And then an eagle watching Earth below.

The nimbus built tall towers to the sun,
With dark foreboding ramparts brooding there;
The curtained rain swept, like a widow's weeds,
Down through the weeping rainbow-patterned air.

Soft animals of every shape and form -
Fairweather friends who change to butterflies;
They run the errands of the winds sublime,
Then fade away before they've crossed the skies.

And many cloud-wrought ships glide through the night
Unseen along the hoary vapour trails,
Made ghostly by the pale moon-mariner .........
I wish that I could trim their pearly sails.