Two Poems

Chance

Shows itself, when you return from getting the mail at night,

as an airplane, a planet, and a partial moon studding the sky
like three lost earrings suspended in Mozart or in blown glass.

A man demonstrates the fragile art of blowing perfume bottles.
One of them breaks, which is not part of the plan.

Do you know that trio in the sky? It plays to the tune of a spirit level.

Eventually the spirit bubble will change direction like a Dali timepiece.

It is turning even now.

Remember, this is about chance and its games.

Where on the roulette wheel do you throw your money, and does it matter?

Wheels are round, and Fortune is a wheel. Grab it anywhere. It will take you full circle

if you can hang on. As a matter of course, the wheel will run you into the ground.

You might get discouraged and let go, often near the top where all your weight dangles.
When something might happen that hasn't before:

the curves you can't see around or get enough of: the definition of desire.

Sky

Sky starts at ground level. Whatever level the ground is, sky starts there.

Sky travels. It cannot not travel.

Notice how sky almost repeats itself with small variations of cloud;
with shades of blue and gray.

The color of sky is subjunctive.
It speaks in run-on sentences. Other times in fragments.

Some days, sky is all margin.

It wraps around everything. There is nothing it will not swaddle.

When you breathe in, sky breathes out.

Sky fills the space between. Just now, it came through a closed window.

Sometimes sky scrims the sun. Like a geisha's fan, a peacock, a royal flush.

Tomorrow, sky may bring rain.

A stone will store pieces of sky. Sky does this when it wants to rest.

If you lose jewelry, that's sky getting free.

Sky will store pieces of stone. Stone does this when it wants to move quickly.

If you live on a planet, that's stone getting free.

When sky listens, it makes the sound of a caterpillar spinning.
A caterpillar spinning makes the same sound as sky.

Jeanette Clough's newest collection is Island, from Red Hen Press.Other publications include Cantatas and Celestial Burn. Her poetry has received awards in the Ruskin Competition, the Rilke Competition, the Spillway Call and Response contest, Atlanta Review, the dA Center for the Arts, and the Los Angeles Fin de Millenium competition. Among the journals publishing her poetry are Askew, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Nimrod, and Pool. Clough, a native of Paterson, New Jersey, now lives and works in L.A. She is a certified open water scuba diver.

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