~Nimbostratus~

…from ‘Drifting Toward Light’

Not Churchill’s Black Dog, but a bruise of a cloud
compressing all hope when it drifts over us again
and hovers indefinitely, the weather we must bear.
There’s no snapping out of it as acquaintances suggest,
it will not be shaken or forcibly dispersed, but hangs
us in a limbo of stagnancy, where nothing new can grow.

It is the state of the weather, forecasted these past few years
since injury and chronic pain withdrew you from the world
and threw shadows over our plans.
Precipitation comes and goes, but barely reaches earth, and so
the soil of our existence is left thirsty for a cloudburst.

We can never know when it might pass forever, we dare not hope
for a few clear days seem to promise light, but then again
you wake with the dread of palpitations, stomach free-falling
and we know that Nimbostratus has descended.

(c) Deb Matthews-Zott