Cloud Chamber
The sky of superposed clouds teases thought
to come out of its locked room and rejoin
the elements. And thought is swiftly caught
up by the heels and shaken free of coin,
of every stitch of decent clothes, of blood,
of murky tokens of itself. Thought, bare
of all the weight it bore, soars up, a flood
of emptiness, that mingles with the air.
There obviously is no more to say,
but saying goes on of its own accord.
Look here, it says, from lowest, ragged gray,
to highest, paper white, the clouds afford
a view incomparable to those below.
For saying can’t resist a windy show.
Dan Campion is the author of Calypso (1981), The Mirror Test (2024), A Playbill for Sunset (2022), and Peter De Vries and Surrealism (1995) and is a co-editor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (1981, 2nd ed. 1998, 3rd ed. 2019). Dan’s poetry has appeared previously in Amethyst Review and in Able Muse, Light, Poetry, Rolling Stone, THINK, and many other magazines.
Amethyst Review 