Thunderhead

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.