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Tampering with Permanence
a Seattle pantoum
__Here where I live, a cloud
looks like a mountain; mountains float.
Like love, illusions laugh out loud.
We’re stuck in nature’s drunken boat:
looks like a mountain; mountains float
and fade to air, though made of rock—
we’re stuck in nature’s drunken boat:
God has to smile upon his flock,
and fade to air, though made of rock—
as clouds (though vapor) become cliffs.
God has to smile upon his flock
to see us easily fooled like this.
As clouds (though vapor) become cliffs,
like love, illusions laugh out loud
to see us easily fooled like this:
__here where I live, a cloud.
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Alison Jennings is a Seattle-based poet who worked as a journalist and accountant, and also taught English and math in public schools before returning to her first love, poetry. Since then, she has had a mini-chapbook and 85 other poems published internationally in numerous journals, including Amethyst Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Meat for Tea, Mslexia, Poetic Sun, Red Door, Society of Classical Poets, Sonic Boom, Stone Poetry, and The Raw Art Review. Her website can be found here.
As one who lived in Everett and worked in Federal Way for a few years, I am saddened by what Seattle has become. I can feel the depth of your own sadness with what is happening. Bless you for your intrinsic message and the dark cloud that now hangs there.
What a lovely pantoum…I especially loved “God has to smile upon his flock”. I’m glad for you that you retired into poetry. Allegra
Yes, I was so pleased that life gave me a chance to fully dedicate myself to the pursuit of poetry.
I’ve never cared for pantoums, but this poem has made me change my mind. What’s most extraordinary here is how what you left unsaid made a firm impression in my mind, and how ghostly, yet impactful, the images you generate are.
Thank you! A pantoum is challenging but if worked with, surprises occur.
Here in Sacramento, we have no floating mountains, just lone and level fields stretched far away, as it were. But I’ve lived up there and know exactly what your pantoum is saying. Great craft!
Thank you so much. I have always been struck by how the clouds in Seattle resemble mountain ranges, and how the mountains, in return , often just float above the horizon, looking very insubstantial.
I love this! I’ve written pantoums but never one that rhymed, and your rhymes are just so natural and pleasing. Thank you! (Portlander here, so I could relate, though it’s a pretty sodden cloud right now.)
Thanks! It’s best to embrace the weather and find its hidden beauty.