Category: Poetry

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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