by Peter Chiu

Those low clouds huddle close,
      lingering ghosts like
              a conversation,
 
moving slowly, almost as if they were
      waiting for each other.
              We find their misty

bodies together –
      their reflection in the water shimmering
              in the late morning light,

the few clouds that remain hang like hats
      over the pine trees lined alongside the lake.
              My dog looks up at them,

her hind legs buckling from the cold.
      Her hearing isn’t so good anymore,
              but I call out to her all the same

from these pale rocks,
      now older than we’ve ever been.

It’s late when she trots back to me,
      trying to tell me what the clouds have said
              in a forgotten language.

Peter Chiu’s recent work has appeared in Crab Creek Review, the Indianapolis Review, wildscape literary journal, and elsewhere. He lives in Los Angeles with his family.