Cloud Studies, by Lynne Kemen

Cloud Study I 

Hello, Honey! I’m home! Where are you?
I begin looking for my
cloud climatologist-my husband.
His head jaunts around Jupiter,
so I look there first.
Three layers: ammonia, hydrogen sulfide-
water on the bottom. My eyes weighted by water,
constantly drizzling but not there.
 
Next, I check Venus. Filled
with sulfuric acid. A day in Los Angeles,
a perpetual haze. Squinting, I don’t see him.
 
Finally falling, back to Earth, I find him.
He’s here, cloud gazing, creating elephants out of the heavens,
faces from fog.  Uncommon cloud thoughts.
 
My NASA guy with missions on Jupiter (Voyager
Galileo) Venus (Pioneer Venus) Earth with CloudSat,
and Calypso. Calypso was almost Picasso,
but Picasso’s posse refused.
My husband shakes his head in disbelief,
as an artist refused immortality.
 
-How long will you be wrangling clouds?
-Not long. I’ll be back, then we’ll talk about your day.

Cloud Study, by John Constable (England) 1822

Cloud Study II 

Pregnant clouds loom,
portending rain.
Greys, browns, smudged.

My NASA scientist, sees it. The resident cloud specialist.
He prizes this piece, prays to the artist.
-Lighting is wrong. Brown shades look like dust storm.
England isn’t eaten by dust storms.

I don’t like where this is going.
Instead, I imagine historical settings.
Dust be damned.
Beethoven lives, thunderous himself.

And Poe’s still depressed. Hans Christian Anderson’s
tykes still terrified. Mary Shelly miscarried her monsters.

Navier-Stokes fundamental equations of fluid dynamics,
Turbulence, again. Constable knows
it’s provocative to postulate. My NASA guy glows, as I
study the floor.

Steamboats shear the English Channel,
Its sulfurous steam browns the sky.

I understand the nature of light,
Faraday’s electromagnetic waves wave.
Fresnel finds waves transverse, side-to-side
Constable senses the theatrics of light and waves.

Lynne Kemen

Lynne Kemen lives in the Great Western Catskills of Upstate New York. Her chapbook, More Than A Handful (Woodland Arts Editions) was published in October 2020. Five of her poems appeared in Seeing Things Anthology, Robert Bensen, Ed. She has been published or has forthcoming poems in La Presa, Silver Birch Press, The Ravens Perch, Blue Mountain Review, Fresh Words Magazine, What We See In our Journeys Anthology. She was Runner Up for The Ekphrastic Review’s competition of Women Artists. She is on the Board of Bright Hill Press in Treadwell, NY.