Can anyone help me understand this poem by Sandra Cisneros, titled "Cloud"?

Cloud

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper.

-Thich Nhat Hanh



Before you became a cloud, you were an ocean, roiled and

murmuring like a mouth. You were the shadows of a cloud cross-

ing over a field of tulips. You were the tears of a man who cried

into a plaid handkerchief. You were the sky without a hat. Your

heart puffed and flowered like sheets drying on a line.



And when you were a tree, you listened to the trees and the tree

things trees told you. You were the wind in the wheels of a red

bicycle. You were the spidery Mariatattooed on the hairless arm

of a boy in dowtown Houston. You were the rain rolling off the

waxy leaves of a magnolia tree. A lock of straw-colored hair

wedged between the mottled pages of a Victor Hugo novel. A

crescent of soap. A spider the color of a fingernail. The black nets

beneath t

Can anyone help me understand this poem by Sandra Cisneros, titled "Cloud"?
This is an extraordinary poem.

Think about a cloud. What comes to mind?

You probably see a cumulus. What is it? And how do you experience it?

This poem takes you through the stages of *being* the cloud. The cloud is first an accumulation of water. Where does it come from (where do you come from?)

This poem is incredible in the sense that it brings up powerful feelings and manages to put it into words. Take the first line "ocean, roiled and murmuring like a mouth". Close your eyes. Remember the ocean. You remember the waves, their sounds, their murmur. I'm also thinking this could be a reference to a French kid's poem, that says the ocean murmurs (I'm thinking that because it makes reference to Victor Hugo later, and he's also written "les travailleurs de la mer" which is about a man fighting the sea in Normandy).

What's great about this line is that it manages to conjure up everyone's sensorial experience of the sea, and then compares it to something you wouldn't expect - a mouth. Like when you have water in your mouth. It's bringing the sound and smell of the sea right to your taste buds, which makes it a total 5 sense experience.

I could go on and on about this stanza - but think of it as a theme. What are the sense brought up in the different stanzas? How are they brought up? What are they compared to?

I also want to bring to your attention the end of that 2nd stanza. The crescent of soap - that's a combination of imagery, right? What's a crescent usually associated with? the moon. Something else that's in the sky. The soap is associated with water. But most of all, that crescent can conjure up thoughts of a shape, the shape you'll find on your "typical" cloud, the cumulus. And that shape gets carried over in the image of the fingernail. But the poet plays on it - it doesn't say "the shape of a fingernail". No. It says "a spider the color of a fingernail". And bonus, there's just been another dimension. The fingernail is associated with a shape, which now transitions into a color. A pink spider? Weird. But "A spider the color of a fingernail". In this context, brilliant.

Think of it that way: imagine the saucer, the bowl of blueberries, the fingernail, the crescent... what do they have in common? The shape. And this is the shape you'd think of in a cloud. So the cloud is more than just an accumulation of water from a diversity of places. It's more than the reunion of natural elements. It's a history. It's shapes. It's smells. It's whatever you as a human being in your day and time, thinking, speaking, in your culture, is associated with a cloud. And this is why the poem is brilliant. The cloud is the poet: it's the sum of where it comes from, what it projects, what it means, and what it evokes.

Try applying this method to the rest of the poem, and savor the images, one by one, let them take you places. In a close up, looking at your nails on that piece of paper, or up above, in the sky.

Have fun, hope that helped!
Reply:It is about transition in your path of life....
Reply:I think it's about the mutability of matter (here namely water) and maybe about timelessness and the soul. If you don't say anything else, who can argue with you?
Reply:This poem is about the great chain of life that flows from one form to another, yet in the end, all are one.
Reply:It's about interconnectedness and infinite possibilities.