swifts  &  s l o w s · a quarterly of crisscrossings

Cloud Haiku
Joshua St. Claire

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Cloud Haiku

Susquehanna cliffs
even these billowing clouds
must begin and end

stratocumulus
pressing on the meadow
bald eagle

advancing clouds
the west wind
yellows

stratus September
a murmuration of starlings
in a copper beech

a flower
with no common name
stratocumulus clouds

cloudbreak a grey fox in an aster meadow

glass of chablis
a sun dog
in the altostratus sky

a flower
with no common name
stratocumulus clouds

staring into the infinite bands of stratus clouds

the dark undersides
of stratocumulus clouds
autumn comes

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Joshua St. Claire is an accountant from a small town in Pennsylvania. His poetry has been published or are forthcoming in Notre Dame Review, Lana Turner, Sugar House Review, Two Thirds North, and ballast, among others. His haiku have appeared in several annual anthologies. He is the winner of Rattle: Poets Respond, the Gerald Brady Memorial Senryu Award and the Trailblazer Award. He firmly believes that the interrobang should be added to the standard keyboard.