The Ambiguity of Clouds

Never mind, the clouds say
as they drift above her. Never mind.
When you first heard as a child,
you thought they meant

let it go, don't fuss about it,
believing the phrase implied
all would be fine
if you didn't obsess, if you didn't
let things fester.

Time has taught you another
meaning; death has taught you,
loneliness has taught you.
It's never the mind

that gets you close to beauty,
the first and last of things,
or any of the wisdoms you long to know.
There's no word for what can take you there

though it has something to do with the eyes of horses,
the body's workings,  whiskers sandpapering across a cheek,
a woman's laugh loud enough to bend a row
of ripening wheat. Who laughed
like that and when? And where were you?

Never mind, never mind,
is it possible the clouds say that,
mindless as they are? All
if you can call them that,
cumulative and shifting shape,

mare's tails, ephemera, fish bones,
a lung bleached of blood,
an inky brain, not thinking,
just folding and refolding all afternoon
long sheets of rain. They never mind.

~ ~ Lorna Crozier
 
Published in Small Mechanics (McClelland & Stewart Publishers, 2011).