A Low Bank of Cloud

By Ed Roberson Ed Roberson

But for a low bank of cloud,

clear morning, empty sky.

The bright band of light beneath the cloud’s gray

I thought at first was open distance, but it’s ice

that by extension raised the lake above the lip of blue lake

and spilled it farther out than that horizon

along the sky

and floods the clouds.

Seeing the distant level further

unfurl into the sky says not to trust

blue line as terminus

when a meniscus of ice

can ride up that wall of the skyline,

a measure of illusion how close

the eye can be to filled

with seeing, to widen instead the tube of that measure

of sight we are given. There is the larger

lake the wider look we open

eyes to see. That glance of the lip

put in a bigger cylinder falls away,

but how much deeper the spring

to fill the cup.

As if the surface we are seeing

drops the more seeing is added,

while we feel the stories well as our height

from which to see. And watch the dawns coming.

…I seem to be emptying

of time the more time I put in,

and see like a man with weathered eyes enough

to face to face up to the sight’s field expanded

to insight. To the dark the lake can turn

and curl up like a map for poems to have

these likenesses to graph,

then come un-scrolled from semblance back

to just this lake. Water

cities are led to layout

beside. But never in stillness;

always the restoration to change,

from ice, from cloud, turning to clear

liquid—as is most of our body

water— thinned sheet, layer

that if written on or with, a bearing

a name chiseled on water

disappears.

Source: To See the Earth Before the End of the World (Wesleyan University Press, 2010)

Biography

Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Roberson studied painting in his youth and was educated at the University of Pittsburgh. His extensive travels inform his work,which is also influenced by spirituals and the blues, and by visual art, such as the mixed-media collages of Romare Bearden. Poet and critic Michael Palmer has called Roberson “one of the most deeply innovative and critically acute voices of our time.”

Roberson is the . . .

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