One Autumn Day, on the back roads somewhere in rural Oklahoma, I saw dozens of white, puffy clouds floating super-close to fields of winter wheat. I started imagining that maybe, if I could just run fast enough and jump far enough, I could touch them! This poem is the result of those imaginings.

The Taste of Clouds

Today the clouds
danced close against
fields too young to reap.

So close, it seemed
that with just one
extra-ordinary leap,

you could touch them
with your fingers as
they sailed serenely by.

You could taste them
with your tongue stuck out and
lick them from the sky!

Oh, I have hurdled
heaven's vault;
with joy I've raced the wind,

in naive dreams,
too young to reap,
where everyone ascends!

Yet lately, though
I'm older and I
stoop beneath the sun,

I keep waking in
the night, the taste
of clouds upon my tongue!

Next poem: Spring Storm

Author: Jerry Dan Deutschendorf
from: Red Earth Whisperings
Part I: Nature and the Nature of Things