Cloud Physics

So it is quite different, then, if in a mountain town
the mountains are close, rather than far. Here

they are far, their distance away established,
consistent year to year, like a parent’s

or sibling’s. They have their own music.
So I confess I do not know what it’s like,

listening to mountains up close, like a lover,
the silence of them known, not guessed at.

Credit

Copyright © 2019 Jill Osier. Used with permission of the author. This poem originally appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Winter 2019.