CLOUDS LOOK LIKE EUROPE

Easter Sunday, 1997

When my brother was a baby, he cried for the moon and would not be comforted. Arms outstretched, silver tears mirroring the celestial globe, he wept full-hearted with desire and longing until he fell asleep on his father's comforting breast.

I look at the vast silent architecture of spring clouds, slow tumbling palaces of bright and dark, and I want to walk within that stately kaleidoscope of ethereal island continents. It would be lonely, wandering in the world of the air, but so quiet that you could hear the earth turn on its axis. I'd be a gliding bird, a soul without a body. I lay on the grass and look up, lost in the clouds, desiring things that cannot be; making sense out of things that don't make sense.

3/17/99

CLOUDS LOOK LIKE EUROPE