A small dark cloud in the shape of no
appeared at the edge of the otherwise clear October
sky, then floated as an answer inside my head
to a question that I forgot, as if my mind
and sky were one, but without a breeze to blow
the no into something else, anything else
beyond the little cause inscribed across
the earth. What a sky is the mind, I thought. What a field
the heart. And the more I thought, the larger the cloud
became, as if I knew from the start I couldn’t
love for long, much less forever as the blue
appeared to want. As if the sky were ready
to remove its veil at the sign of the smallest cloud,
defer to the sudden drop of darkness again.