Cirrus
Rozalija Grace
—for Elizabeth Rose Shaffer
In January, long clouds feather
eggshell sky shifting colours
like Mary trying to decide between white
and blue robes.
When I was a child, my mother
taught me to remember cirrus because it looked like circus,
like the feathers of some glamorous performer perched
on an elephant or trapeze. I can see her now—can’t you?—
Mary backstage in the dressing room,
clad in that same Bob Mackie miracle
Taylor wears on Life of a Showgirl, waiting
for her cue.
This was probably not the vision
of Luke Howard, a Quaker, who named the clouds
in 1802, from the Latin
for “curl,” “ringlet,” or “lock of hair”—a token
of remembrance.
Far from you, I watch the clouds
spread in the winds above me, remembering
mornings I woke in our bed beside feathers
loosed from bitten pillows, tracks of nails
drawn in long and wisping wrinkles through the empty
sheets on your side in three rings: for you,
me, and what dwells in the space between.
There
and then I understood how it is for God
to be apart from the world.
eggshell sky shifting colours
like Mary trying to decide between white
and blue robes.
When I was a child, my mother
taught me to remember cirrus because it looked like circus,
like the feathers of some glamorous performer perched
on an elephant or trapeze. I can see her now—can’t you?—
Mary backstage in the dressing room,
clad in that same Bob Mackie miracle
Taylor wears on Life of a Showgirl, waiting
for her cue.
This was probably not the vision
of Luke Howard, a Quaker, who named the clouds
in 1802, from the Latin
for “curl,” “ringlet,” or “lock of hair”—a token
of remembrance.
Far from you, I watch the clouds
spread in the winds above me, remembering
mornings I woke in our bed beside feathers
loosed from bitten pillows, tracks of nails
drawn in long and wisping wrinkles through the empty
sheets on your side in three rings: for you,
me, and what dwells in the space between.
There
and then I understood how it is for God
to be apart from the world.
Rozalija Grace is a Russian and Armenian diasporic writer, translator, and cultural activist from southern Alaska. Her poems, short stories, and essays explore identity, language reclamation, and inclusive orthodoxy and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and featured in Dappled Things, Rust & Moth, Room, and other journals. Her translations of early Soviet poetry have been nominated for Best Literary Translations. She currently serves as a poetry editor for Psaltery & Lyre and lives in Minneapolis as the fiancée of a great American novelist. Read more at her website and on Bluesky @rozalijagrace.com.