Tazz
      

       Driving to in rain,
       coming home in snow,
       I could not help but think
       how things that fall
       announce 
       their passage
       to the eye;
       and those that rise
       do so 
       invisible 
       in quiet chimes
       of averted light.
       See the puddled rain,
       the drifted snow,
       and yet from each 
       the blue and white plumed 
       clouds arise
       with no remark 
       to catch the eye.
       I thought too,
       of children waiting --
       French, let’s say --
       waiting for a morning bus
       after dawn, after rain,
       on misted morning cobbled streets.
       And pointing to the sky
       they say,
       that one, it looks like a bear,
       and that one like a motor car
       and that one there ...
       and so it goes, their guessing game.
       Their sun mounted in a gabled sky
       spangles each drop of remnant mist
       and just before the bus arrives
       a limber cloud 
       prowls on by,
       a sinewed shape, so evident,
       a dappled cloud
       with greenish eyes,
       it preens itself in rainbow light
       that leads the heart 
       and eye to know
       a brand new word:
       calico.



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