Cloud landscapes seen from thirty-five thousand feet

by Mark Ayers, 2018

The clouds forge phantom landscapes
As mind’s eye strives to match them
To the hidden earth below— Each peak and valley traced
In vaporous invention

Then:

Light fractures cloud-walls
And the mind’s map falters
Between snow-fields and cloud-banks
Depth deceives the eye
White above mistakes for white below
And certainty dissolves in air

All merely drift and dreaming
Here at thirty-five thousand feet
Where earth and sky
Trade their ancient places
And nothing is quite what it seems
In this realm of shifting shapes

Through breaks in cloud,
Brief glimpses ground us— Then close again, leaving us
To navigate by imagination’s
Uncertain compass, suspended
Between what is and what we think we see