I’ve returned to Cloud Study by Donald Platt.
Three lines, tercets grouped together perhaps
for dramatic effect and resembles
the painting in some literary way.
Without being told we are shown that
the foreground of this painting is rushed,
sketched not painted, worked outside
in the bluster before a storm and not in
the comfort of a central heated building.
The middle ground is somewhere beneath
the swirls as if in fluted dimension. We are
informed of major events. Clouds scud by.
Corona-Virus outbreak in China,
bush-fires in Australia; will they bring
down the President Of America.
Outside the pother of distant traffic
hums like a thunder of the mind some
two hundred years later by Taw Head,
Devon. Binary opposites, cloud after
cloud, crestfallen. The arc of the bridge
cantilevers over the estuary
where Waders and Gulls are blissfully unaware
of the clouds that gather as this writer
blusters on. Perhaps if we stare at something
long enough it will change. Time stands still
for no-one. Is this a cloud study
of a normal life; an life. Spoonbill,
Merlin, Buzzard and Kestrel flap their wings
in fast bursts, push down into the sky.
As a low rumble makes way for a peal!(
