This poem is best viewed on a computer rather than a mobile device.
The clouds have moved in with me overnight
like a family of raccoons but without any of the scrabbling.
They are mostly very quiet, only making their soft presence
known through the occasional indoor drip of rain or unexpected wet patch.
I would love to know their story, how they ended up taking refuge in my house.
I am trying to learn their language, straining to transform my body into various
meaningful shapes but so far all my attempts have been met with vaporous silence.
One cloud is cuter and fluffier than the others (less menacing than the dark rain cloud
that seems to grow each time I glimpse it, less nervous than the purple one that
twitches with unease and unspent lightning.)
I see it poking out from behind corners, as if it’s following me around.
I stretch out my hand and it approaches shyly, hovering but not quite touching me.
For a split second I think perhaps I could have been a mother after all.
“I honestly don’t quite know where this poem came from – I was trying to write a cloud poem for my upcoming book Introduction To Cloud Care (which will come out in February 2025 from Broken Sleep Books) but I ended up deciding not to use it for the book – I’m so very grateful it found a home here. For me, it’s about our astonishing ability to love something unknown and fragile in a protective way, even when it does not enter our lives in the guise of a biological child.”
Laura Theis‘ work appears in Poetry, Oxford Poetry, Magma, Rattle, Aesthetica, iamb, etc. Her Elgin-Award-nominated debut how to extricate yourself (2020), an Oxford Poetry Library Book-of-the-Month, won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Pamphlet Prize. A Spotter’s Guide To Invisible Things (2023) received the Live Canon Collection Prize and the Society of Authors’ Arthur-Welton-Award. Other accolades include the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, AM Heath Prize, Poets & Players Prize, Oxford Brookes Poetry Prize as well as a Forward Prize nomination. Her new collection from Broken Sleep Books and her children’s debut Poems from a Witch’s Pocket (Emma Press) are both forthcoming in 2025.