As we drive south on I-5, I stare at the smokestacks
in Georgetown billowing into Northwest winds.
Are those cloud makers? I ask my father,
Are those cloud makers? Are those cloud makers?

My father looks at me through the rearview mirror,
then over at the cement columns, towering like sentinels.

I wonder as nascent mythology
quietly makes the rain.

Droplets streak across the window,
forming larger droplets and overflowing.

I ask again. Silence grows between my fingers
as they run through velour upholstery.
My father, knowing this will never end,
grips the wheel, lets out a low sigh, and says, Yes. Yes.

—

Eddie Kim received his MFA in Poetry from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He is a Kundiman fellow from Seattle who served as the inaugural Pacific Northwest Kundiman Regional Chair. His poems have appeared in The Margins, The Collagist, Pinwheel, Narrative Magazine, and others.