Just a few pictures of clouds

I need to keep it short this weekend. This weekend I’m meeting with my writing group and have stories of theirs to read and comment on. And then I’ve signed up for another writing class that I’m doing over this weekend, about short story beginnings, also through One Story, since I had such a good experience with the class I did with them last summer. So I’ll keep it short on Words Like Trees today.

In my English literature class this week, we’ve begun exploring poetry by Wisława Szymborska. I first encountered Szymborska’s “A Few Words on the Soul” some years ago. It entranced me with its melancholy, beautiful reality. So during the last three weeks, I have been preparing a unit for my students, reading as much of Szymborska’s poetry as I can, discovering gems, puzzling at meanings as I try to understand.

I am entranced by her poem about a sea cucumber, “Autotomy,” which we discussed in class on Thursday. We drew a sea cucumber on the board, divided it in half, and labeled it with the binary oppositions that the poem sets up.

But for today, I’ll leave here a few lines from another poem: “Clouds.” I’ll leave a few pictures of clouds from the last two weeks here too. In these lines, I love the playfulness. I love the sense of transformation.

I’d have to be really quick
to describe clouds –
a split second’s enough
for them to start being something else.

—Lines 1-4 of "Clouds" by Wisława Szymborska, translated from Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

Wishing you well. I’ll write again in a couple of weeks,
Jimmy