CLOUDBURST
I want to be a small god, even
a dusty household deity puffing
fiery magic into rooms where sharp
clothes and people inside them
chortle and think they think
and then decide our fate. I’ve
no gift for moving the movers
and only rank as a person
on good days. I shadow the shadows
of plovers as they skitter over mud,
and watch a bored malamute
nose a shrub and find a tick.
We’re rivulets coursing puddle
to pool, bearing last fall’s leaves
and the day’s whirling seeds
toward obscure ends. At our best,
we shine in runoff, joining what
turns in rivers that mean the world
to their gleaming trout. Power
gathers in ashen clouds.
WHAT YOU KNOW
You know the smell of grass.
Sky hunger. The way it feels
being airborne. The shape
of thrush flight, one tree
to the next, a curving path
restarted halfway. That
having just enough isn’t.
Smell of your lover’s sweat.
You don’t know you know this
anymore, but you do.
How we come from parents,
teachers, from one bold friend--
and belong to children
who’ll know us as stories told
for the cadence of the telling.
And you know the metallic sound
of a huckster’s voice.
We speak more slowly now,
assembling thoughts. Once,
in the Dark Sky Park west
of Mackinaw, we spent dusk
watching for hawks,
then trained binoculars on the ecliptic,
finding Jupiter and its four
visible moons, almost
as though we didn’t know.
We knew. Just to see.
Michael Lauchlan has contributed to many publications, including New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The North American Review, Louisville Review, Poet Lore, and Lake Effect. His most recent collection is Trumbull Ave., from WSU Press. Running Lights is forthcoming in 2026 from Cornerstone Press.
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