Painting Clouds

No Starbucks.
No e-mail in-box.
No I-Pod downloads.

From a secluded corner
of a neighborhood park
with nothing but easel and canvas
between me and sky,
I took refuge beneath a canopy
of flowering chestnuts.

And painted clouds.

Bunches.
In towering columns
and billowing masses.

And renegades,
such as myself,
defecting from the horde.
Some to go alone vanishing
into the heavens.
Others hooking up together
as new tufts
of tumbleweed.

While the world kept rushing
to sign Facebook and My Space.

As I painted,
I took on faces
of the clouds.
Trailers from the past
rolling
by my eyes,
restless to move on-
people, places, dreams
left behind.

Eavesdroppers encroached.
One then a second,
enough flutter jarring thoughts
back to my computer
impatiently waiting
for its next command.

Annoyed,
I knit my brow
putting on indifference,
ignoring the intruders.

The skies mirrored
the tide of fortune,
the clouds themselves
guised as augurs:
a horn of plenty spilled over
with succulent flowers and fruits;
ancient ruins the Acroplis lay
wasted on a hill;
a mocking harlequin
laughing
in sequins and mask;
Father Time
waving
the ominous scythe
and hourglass.

Vignette fading to vignette.

Portent or whimsy?
The craft of these shape-shifters
shuffling
between life and death like
wandering troupes of theapians
lost between worlds.

And then came the jolt.
Besieged by what was now
a gaggle of eavesdroppers,
eyes riveted to the mutating
panorama of my canvass.

My heart sank.
( "Damn it!" I cursed to myself,
Was there no sancity left
on this planet?)

But my hands
kept on painting
as if having discovered
another purpose
than clicking icons.

With tranquill colors,
smell of chestnut blooms
and divinations tunneled deep
in my tissues,
I took my ease.

To notice the gaggle and I
seemed to paint as one
like the defecting clouds
drifting apart
to rejoin again,
each finding something
that was lost.

I realized
they were no different
than I-
needing to escape
the self-imposed cubicles
running our lives-
synthetic spheres wired
by some other-determined web.

Needing
to be like the clouds,
wanderers
in our own worlds.

Copyright 2009 Francis Don Daniels