Clouds
A whip-poor-will brushed
her wing along the ground
a moment ago, fifty years
in the orchard where my father
kept pear and plum,
a decade of peach trees
and Antinovka’s apples
whose seeds come
from Russia by ship
under clouds islanding
a window very past
where also went
the soul of my mother
in a boat with blossoming
sails like apple petals
in wind fifty years at once.
Copyright Credit: Poem copyright ©2020 by Carolyn Forché, “Clouds” from In the Lateness of the World, (Penguin Publishing Group, 2020.) Poem reprinted by permission of the author and the publisher.