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Umbra

The blazing height of summer’s day
Now darkens to weird quasi-night—
Translucent dusk, half-cloaking gray,
Half-veiling darkness pierced by sight.

What shapeless cloud was blown astray
That dares eclipse the noonday light
Yet deigns not halt and wends its way,
Wandering on in aimless flight?

It floats where the jocose winds toss
Its lightness on their battling whims—
As I, too, wander at a loss.

The sun, though, spans the sky’s far rims
In measured arcs, destined to cross
Our paths and cast the shade that dims.

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Summer Clouds

Mountainous hulks, towering massifs
Swelling skyward ponderously
Dwarfing the earthbound world, impassive
To its hasty frivolity;

Botryoidal puffs shining white,
Tinged with faint opalescent hues
Glowing in the resplendent light
Of the wide heavens’ turquoise blues;

Wind-filled billowing sails unfurled,
Denizens of far, tropic climes—
The distant, blessed, fabled world
That wafts its warmth here in these times;

Heavy you bear your tumid form,
Engorged by sun and rain and earth;
Pregnant with what should be a storm,
Though yet you peal no pangs of birth.

You hold no storm that could belie
Your tropic languor. Satisfied
To soar in silence, you float by,
Majestic on the winds you ride.

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Adam Sedia (b. 1984) lives in his native Northwest Indiana and practices law as a civil and appellate litigator. He has published four books of poetry and his poems, essays, and fiction have appeared in various literary journals. He is also a composer, and his musical works may be heard on his YouTube channel.

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2 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Marvelous cloud descriptors with imaginative imagery. Now there is one word, “botryoidal,” I never heard on a weather forecast, yet it is an apt description of clouds.

    Reply
  2. Joseph S. Salemi

    I like “Umbra” (a Petrarchan sonnet in tetrameters, no less!) and the way it plays with the interaction of bright light and dim shadow. The rhymes are perfect. I think there is a typo in line 12, where the apostrophe should be omitted from the word “span’s” (clearly meant to be a verb).

    “Summer Clouds” does something wonderful — the first three quatrains are composed of relative or dependent clauses, with no main verb, all built around three metaphoric synonyms for “clouds” Those synonyms are “hulks,” “puffs,” and “sails.” The fourth quatrain then hits the reader with a main verb — “you bear”, which is then supplemented by “you hold” in line 17 and “you float” in line 19.

    The ending words “you ride” do not constitute a main verb, since they are grammatically dependent on “the winds [that] you ride.” But “ride” puts a final emphasis on the swirling movement, the billowing , and the soaring that dominate this poem. This is highly professional craftsmanship.

    Reply

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