Cloud Sculptures   I. Lessons   Poor Mrs. Brown— Ireland floats near Asia, Florida drifts to Maine, mountains unravel into plains. We were children when you tried to teach us facts. Geo- graphy is but a snapshot of a moving world   II. Moments   Creations, fathered by the sun, mothered by wind, part dream, part mist—Daedalus to Icarus in faces of silver and gray calls out, two lovers mingle in a kiss, bright-edged their love, but vaporizing wisps. The old woman, lying in a sarcophagus, basks in warmth her husband never took the time to give once more before she turns into a fetus. Children foment to adulthood statuesque, heedless of high-flying jets. Phoenicians still glide through antiquity over mystical seas   III. Laughter   Anew, Vesuvius erupts into a giant head of Nixon, Ramses, Valley of the Kings, profaned as men without dentures         and circus clowns. Ben Franklin grows Tolstoy's beard               while Venus de Milo     sprouts Hercules' arms. Above triceratops and T-rex     in stand-off       Pterodactyl still flies                  after Pegasus    across untrammeled blue.          What is Mt. Rushmore but a sketch for the next idea—        Lenin, Dali, Mozart, arms outstretched  to toast absurdity                                                IV. Shadows      They roll, they tumble and conform        to the cool topography of evening,         they march across the sun         like caissons, they                     infiltrate society at play  on swings and baseball fields     and backyard swimming pools, spreading blue and purple shade            on summer green,                     on boys attached to fishing poles           in still-life, slow catfish uncaught            beneath cool, lazy rivers. They              give us night like a blanket                     pulled across a sleeping child                             Michael Pranzatelli Community                             Third Place, Poetry