Cloud Song

Cloud over the desert

Floating mass of airborne water

Stalking across rock and dune

On sky-long legs of sunlight-rays;

Cloud across the desert

Drifting shadow over sun-hot sand

Pregnant with promise of rain

That never comes.

Cloud over the desert

Drifting over empty well, eroded hill

And cooling with its shadow’s touch

The dome of the dried skull –

Cloud over the desert

Promising,

Promising, someday,

The rain will come.

Copyright Biswapriya Purkayastha 2013