The Cloud
Driving into low cloud everything fades
to a blur, all colour and definition leached
so that trees and buildings become vague shapes.
The glimpse of a house light is a spark, a blink
like the flicker of the broadband router
and it seems to me that we could be travelling
through the unmarked lanes of the internet.
Undefined and undetailed people loom
in and out of focus; dead or alive, we leave
shadows of ourselves where we have been.
Footsteps remain as when a cat walks
across wet concrete, to blend and blur
over time but fixed and always there.
Our voices, silhouettes, thoughts right or wrong,
still there to be chanced on through the fog.
Angela France’s fifth collection Terminarchy came out in 2021 with Nine Arches Press. Angela teaches creative writing at the University of Gloucestershire and in community settings. She leads the longest running reading series in Cheltenham, ‘Buzzwords’.