One dark overcast day shadowed by clouds, I walked home beneath a canopy of tree branches that spread across the thin road and gave just enough light from beyond their distant tops to tell the tale of the weather's mood. Do clouds really have silver linings? I wondered. I looked up. No. They didn't.

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Have you ever seen a cloud?A rain cloud
that stood gray and looming
A deep gray
that threatened to burst
and send a cascade of rain, pelting and drenching, drowning and forcing
Until nothing is left but a gray world
Of soaking silhouettes

Have you ever seen a cloud?
That buried the sun in its infinity
That suffocated the light from above and drained the color from below
From blue to gray
The world is nothing but gray

Have you ever seen a cloud?
A long, infinite strip
Drawn somewhere by a tiny silver fly
but diffusing into a white and twisted perversion of a line
Spread apart
No longer straight

Have you ever seen a cloud?
That crept across the sky
Covered half with its gray and ominous mass
and threatening to steal the blue
That inched along
until the blue was a myth

Have you ever seen a cloud?
And have you ever noticed
that only the white and puffy ones in the shapes of cotton and puppies
Are the ones with a silver lining?