INTAGLIO by Emma Aylor

This early morning, clouds pulled under
us full of breath, in sheets,
completely inhuman, and it was early,

as I said, so the light deepened the relief

of the drifts in the unrolled bolt,
which settled like his curls, or dunes, or hummocks
of substantial ground, and though moved,

I thought continually of something else,

several proofs of which live above: of vapor
I made breath, cloth, hair, sand, earth—
this isn’t exactly failure, I’ll say,

but multiplication; the layers seemed

to add pleasure to the scene.
Start again when the plane surpasses a river
bent as so much else—I won’t, this time,

list—but not quite. What can I be,

such that, as it shakes out,
I can be like both something
and nothing else? I can feel the joint

where each metaphor fails.

Now, of course, I’m aware of you
reading, but while I thought in flight
(constructing a motivation), it was as if

someone had asked me, before, to prepare

the views for them, all through
my life. What would I say, I’d asked
myself, apparently—what is it that I’d tell you

of that cloud if you were here?