Cloud Studies.

Sullivan, Mark

CLOUD STUDIES

Painting is with me but another word for feeling.

--John Constable

   1.
   Every day to speak only
      in the language of weather--
         strange immersion school,

   abandoning your earthly
      vernacular for the operatic
         vowels and stage-whispered

   accents of atmosphere--
      with the result that
         these turbulent studies line

   the gallery walls almost
      two hundred years later, our
         most common topic

   treasured like jewels. Each
      oil-skied specimen's
         sheltered under glass like

   some glorious rare moth
      spreading the quelled haste
         of its wings, bluish

   whites and unpolished
      silvers, gray tingeing to
         the yellow of wet clay.

   And many bearing the date
      of execution--12 August
         1822, say, the samples

   collected from outdoor
      air, light-effects brined
         in a salt-thick stasis.

   Something so homely
      in preserving clouds, canning
         this commotion, to

   show all this is what we
      are, water vapor and
         dust compounded into

   a geological amplitude,
      momentary coasts forming,
         fragmenting, the feelings

   we've had and voiced
      or kept quiet going off
         who knows where.

   2.

   What can I do
     but what he did,
   set down these notes
     as the slightest

   approximation of their
     subject: 27 August
   1822, no sky except
     clouds, clamshell-

   toned, balled up
     and tossed away like
   the rags he used to wipe
     his hands, his brushes.

   6 September 1822,
     thunderheads mottled
   as overhead ocean,
   the paper's edges so

   chipped and worn the study
     looks like the tatter
   of a robe woven from
     an explosion. These

   forecasts are framed relics
     of all that escapes
   matter, just residues
     made of ground-up

   earth and essential
     oils--sweat-painted
   face staining
     Veronica's veil, resurrected

   body x-rayed into
     a shroud--articles
   of faith he forged,
     fabricated light, inlay of air.

   3.

          31 September 1822,
   alchemized date

          refined from time's
   rough metals, as these clouds'

          quicksilver performance
   of soot particles

          and ice crystals
   lingers here, daubs

          and smudges starring
   into this space like

          illuminated letters
   in thick Latin pages.

          Small windows, shimmering
   as words will light

          with what lies behind,
   as the term he coined

          for this singular
   activity, writing, I have

          done a good deal
   of skying. Verb without

          object, or subject
   really (try saying,

          I sky); just another
   way to say we are

          the place boundlessness
   zeroes in

          for a held
   breath: it raises

          itself above me
   and I sky.