Cloud Formations

On simmering summer afternoons,
Mother and I stretched out
on the backyard grass
at our tiny wartime tract house
on Brighton Street
close to the Lockheed plant
and we tried to identify objects
in the clouds.
Those were the years
before smog commandeered the skies
over the L.A. basin.
Cumulus clouds were commonplace.

Mother was good at this.
She would spot some formation
in the clouds,
point it out to me,
and then tell a story.
I marveled at the stories,
but most of the time
I could not see what she saw
and that was a common theme
of our sixty-two years together:
we often did not agree
on what we were looking at,
but she could tell a story
like no one else.