Wave Clouds over Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia

Rare as white peacocks, they strut in the sky
before fanning on a glass shore.

It starts with a jostle in winds— 
shoulders bumping as they pass—  

a taste of vapor, air drinking  
from a chalice, you might say.

What was once placid sky
now with more rhythm, 

turbulence: one rises,  
one falls. Then, having swelled 

to a crest, the clouds surrender
and tumble onto a coastline  

only they know, like the secret beaches  
of our long marriage. 

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Karla Daly is a midlife graduate of American University’s MFA Creative Writing program. Her poems are forthcoming or have appeared in Rust + Moth, Unbroken Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, The Sunlight Press, and others. She is a recipient of a DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Fellowship and was a co-winner of The Phillips Collection's Lupertz Poetry Challenge. She works as a writer and editor in Washington, DC.