Carolyn Forché’s ability to transport us to unusual places is a gift.

Here in her poem, “Clouds”, we learn of tart Russian Antinovka apples that become for her, personal symbols of the immigrant experience in America.

In this tender poem about memory and movement, she skillfully manages to collapse time as she reflects on the lives of her parents.

Clouds
By Carolyn Forché

A whip-poor-will brushed
her wing along the ground
a moment ago, fifty years
in the orchard where my father
kept pear and plum,
a decade of peach trees
and Antinovka’s apples
whose seeds come
from Russia by ship
under clouds islanding
a window very past
where also went
the soul of my mother
in a boat with blossoming
sails like apple petals
in wind fifty years at once.


American Life in Poetry does not accept unsolicited manuscripts. It is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2020 by Carolyn Forché, "Clouds" from In the Lateness of the World (Penguin Publishing Group, 2020.) Poem reprinted by permission of the author and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2021 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Kwame Dawes, is George W. Holmes Professor of English and Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska.