Dear Cloud

Marc Peter Keane, in his remarkable set of meditative explorations, Dear Cloud, asks what if we had the ability to act on our inner urge to experience life as another person, not just hypothetically, but to actually live their lives — to be that lonely man whose chance meeting in the high-desert changes his life forever, or the new-born babe amazed at its still unfathomed world? And not just other people, but to intimately experience the unique viewpoints of other forms of life on this planet — an ancient cedar struck by lightning, a cheetah out for blood. And going even further, to delve into the spirit of place and occupy the inanimate — a tide pool, the mirror surface of a pond.

Mixing a devoted naturalist’s awe with what seems almost shamanic insight, seasoned with inspired and delightfully wry big-picture matter-of-factness, Dear Cloud comprises fascinatingly detailed observations and unexpected realizations about the world we live in. These thoughts take the form of letters sent home by a shape-changing protagonist who slips seamlessly between various identities, experiencing both the profound physical solitariness of every existence, and paradoxically, their absolute interconnectedness.

Midwest Book Review, writing about Dear Cloud:
"The world should never stop amazing. Dear Cloud is a novel from Marc Peter Keane asking many questions of the world and the shifts of the spirit as we travel through life and discover the ever changing picture of the world around us. Thoughtful and compelling reading that enlightens as it entertains, Dear Cloud is not to be overlooked."

If you would like to be contacted about upcoming publications,
please send me an email: books@mpkeane.com

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Paperback ISBN: 978-0615425344 • Kindle ASIN: B004O6MRL6

tide pool

dear cloud

i have been a tide pool on a rocky shore, a cleft in a mile-long outcropping of basalt that catches water like an upturned leaf. just a thimble from the bucket of the bay.

each morning salt waters flow into me, shivered in by lapping waves that quiver and hiss as they fill me with small presents. sand and pebbles that tumble in with their tiny scrapings. shards of glass, some glinting, sunlit, most dull-ground and mute. shreds of rope, broken pieces of shell, a shattered piece of bright buoy. sand dollars wash in with urchins, bobbing moonjellies, schools of young sculpins, and billions of smaller lifesparks, some plant some animal, smidgens of existence that fill the water with suggestions of bigger things to be. the salt water and its bounty fill me and then cover me until i am no more, erased beneath the waves, just one more dent on the coastal floor.

then come the quiet hours, high tide, subsumed by water, the rolling pull of the waves above me but a distant presence. all the rockweed and nailbrush that grow along my edges float up in frilly curtains and sway softly through beams of angled sunlight. gangs of spiked urchins nibble their way across my hollow, scouring their paths of plant life. the clustered mouths of barnacles open and close in quick gulps as they shoot out appendages that look like fanned tongues or lacy hands grasping at the water, tugging in what miniscule bits of food they chance to find. nearby, anemone rest patiently, anchored to small cracks, waiting for fish to nestle into their fronds. fish seeking shelter, finding something else entirely. once a crab was grabbed by a large anemone. as it was drawn inside, its armored body enfolding deep into the pulsing muscle, it slowly disappeared from sight until only one red claw remained hanging outside, waving back and forth, as if beckoning.
come here, come here. you gotta see this. or, maybe, just to say goodbye.

after a few hours the tide turns, the irresistible tug slides into reverse, and the salty waters are sucked from me back into the bay along with anything that isn’t tied down. the barnacles stay, as do the anemone and the seaweed — my constant friends — but the rest washes out to sea and on to parts unknown. if it’s daytime, i lie exposed to the sun, drying, in summer baking, the dark basalt as hot as a griddle. what has legs scurries for cover in cracks and crevices, down into the puddles of water such as remain in my deepest parts. what can’t move languishes under the sun, cooking. at night, i lie open to the stars searching through that other ocean. i count them and think of home. and you.

then the surge turns yet again, sending new waters flooding over me. all this, twice a day, every day, without fail. in and out, like breathing.

when it rains, clear water runs in fine rivulets off the stone outcroppings, finding its way down across the rocky shore, pouring into me in cool streams. it tastes sweet at first and later, if the rains continue hard and strong, it carries in bits of the forest that grows beyond the shore, fallen leaves and twigs and parts of many small bodies, the vinegary taste of decay.
most days, visitors come from above to look into me. flocks of gulls strut about squawking, poking through the water with their splayed bony feet, pecking incessantly at everything from seaweed to seashells. an otter slips into my pool, a sleek squeeze of fluid muscle, bobbing and diving, over and over. it picks up a smooth stone and an urchin from the bottom and returns to the surface. floating on its back, it lays the stone on its belly, uses it to smash the urchin open, feasts, then rolls and dives for more. by the time it leaves, the pool is a thin soup of entrails and black spines. the crabs had a field day.

a boy came one day and stood peering into my shallows, tentatively jabbing his spear at things he saw. he looked deeper and deeper into the water, searching in hidden places for a movement or a color that would betray hiding prey. he was very quiet as he squatted there looking, black eyes in his sunbrowned face fixed intently on the bottom of the pool. eyes like pools themselves. as he looked, rafts of bubbles from the surf were nudged across the surface by the breeze, gathering where he crouched ankle-deep in the water. hundreds of bubbles, shiny and clear, skinned with undulating patterns of green and purple, passed across the surface in front of him. his focus shifted from the bottom of the pool to those colored isles and he noticed that in each bubble, he could see the reflection of the entire sky. the deep, deep blue dome, the long, striated clouds, and the flocks of gulls circling high above. and then, he saw himself. no, hundreds of himselves, wide-eyed, staring back up from all those iridescent domes. the realization came on him like warm air that spread as a grin across his face, ear to ear. seeing that made him smile even more.

an octopus came skulking into me and poked around a small cave-like overhang for some time. she liked the place well enough to lay her eggs and stayed on to guard them, spitting ink at the slightest provocation. sea slugs have left their spaghetti-filled sacs with millions of beaded offspring. sculpins deposited maroon clusters of eggs in the hollows of mussel beds. when these broods hatch there’s a sudden flurry of activity. little midges swimming in a panic everywhere and everything else showing up to eat.

the ocean is a huge thing, and i was no more than a teardrop, yet in all these comings and goings, the living and the dying, the solid parts and those fluid, i held within me a universe.

i was a pool of death   a pool of life
i was nothing if not restless