a great cloud, surging

patriotism & a pantoum poem prompt

We 100% refused to leave the house on the 4th of July…

Celebrating the U!S!A! (for those of you not tuned into the 24/7 fuck-show of our rapid descent into the Christofascist, authoritarian, Seven Mountains, Project 2025 hellmouth) hasn’t been easy lately!

And, besides, we can see the fireworks shot off from the ballpark every Friday all summer long from the clothing-optional art lounge we call “home”— so we knew the spectacle would come to us.

But- just before sunset- we looked out the window to see these utterly massive and unfathomably close clouds rapidly billowing upward, like a time-lapse in real-time. And being the cloud-peepers that we are, this drew us outside to ooh and ahhh…and then we thought…I bet the view of these is great from the river…

So we dropped our sketchbooks in a bag, threw our chairs on our backs, and walked down.

Families decked out in flags, with picnic blankets spread up and down the embankment from bridges to ballpark, were keeping impatient kids occupied as the sun went about setting.

We were there for the clouds and cracked our notebooks to do some writing as they turned hot pink and moved east in the sky.

Just at sunset, the cloud lightning started…

I set up a page…and started writing about the clouds:

Poem on the Fourth of July

a great cloud surging
with lightning in its belly
across fields of dreams-
and we are all waiting for lights.

with lightning in its belly
fits of fire in the shape of a cloud-
and we are all waiting for lights
together at night.

fits of fire in the shape of a cloud.
can you hear the crowd?
together at night,
waiting for what's coming.

can you hear the crowd,
across fields of dreams,
waiting for what's coming?
a great cloud, surging.

A prompt for you…

I was halfway into this pantoum when it occurred to me that there was a very sneaky undercurrent running through my lines and maybe I wasn’t actually thinking about the clouds after all on this 4th of July…?

It hit me in the chest when I wrote, “waiting for what’s coming”.

(There’s an election this year in the US, btw… I hope you’re ready to vote, friends. I love you.)

Try playing with this. The pantoum is an excellent form for weaving lines in a way that mixes their meaning.

First, set up your page for a pantoum— For those new to this poetic form I so adore, you can read more about it here:

In praise of good boundaries: Pantoum

Stanza 1
A
B
C
D

Stanza 2
B
E
D
F

Stanza 3
E
G
F
H

Stanza 4
G
C
H
A

(Pantoum can be shorter or longer and there are variations, but this is my standard. I wrote 120 of these last year! 🎇)

Now, start with Line A and make an observation about your external environment— outside, indoors, doesn’t matter where you are, but really observe it and write Line A about that.

Now, if you wanna work like me: Copy Line A into the last Line A of the poem. Now you know how your poem starts and how it ends, but you get to discover what happens in-between as your lines weave together. (That’s what makes this particular poetic form feel so oracular to me.)

After I fill in my A, I like to quick, quick, quick blast out my B, C, D to finish the thought in the first stanza. Then, I copy my B, C & D into their repeat lines and consider what interesting thing might fill-in-the-blanks.

Consider this & see if you can do something in these lines that changes the meaning of your poem in a surprising way by the end…

1. Leave a comment and share your poem!

2. What did you discover about what makes for a great Line A?

just a coupla anti-authoritarian cloud-peepers here for a good time!