Poetry Friday - Pushing the Clouds Away

Wow. It's Friday again already and I haven't posted anything this week. Well, it is what it is. :-)

It's 1978. Hormones rage and all roads are ahead and open. My 19 year old self picks up a book by Rod McKuen, considered saccharine by many, but I like him. One poem in particular touched me at the time. It's funny looking at it again, thirty years later, and from such a different perspective.

Pushing the Clouds Away
by Rod McKuen,

Clouds are not the cheeks of angels, you know
They’re only clouds.
Friendly sometimes, but you can never be sure.
If I had longer arms I’d push the clouds away
or I’d make them hang above the water
somewhere else,

But I’m just a man who needs and wants,
mostly things he’ll never have.
Looking for that thing thats hardest to find:
himself.

I’ve been going a long time now
along the way I’ve learned some things.
You have to make the good times yourself,
take the little times and make them big times,
and save the times that are all right
for the ones that aren’t so good.
I’ve never been able to push
the clouds away by myself.
Help me.
Please?