Herding Vegetable Sheep by E. Catarina Cadea, recorded by Kate Baker for Clark's World magazine, issue 30 March 2009.

I heard the clouds as I do every day.

Their ghostly perturbances wrap around the wings of the plane, obscuring the blue

AOL logo with their wispy fingers, and then retreat under the stream of air from the props,

swirling and compacting into tight white formations.

Remind me of those queer plants.

What were they called?

Vegetable sheep.

I've seen them on my vacation in New Zealand years ago,

and there was a New Zealand. These plants are related to daisies, the tour guide said. It was hard to believe that.

I watched the columns of numbers that scroll across my retinal implant with an occasional commercial interruption from my employer. Only nowadays they call them

congressional communique's. I suppose they are. I wish I could save them to reread them later, but preserving such

trivia is not worth getting rested for. The clouds swirl, tighter andugger, their color deepening into gray, and my plane circles

them this way and that, hurting them together, making them coalesce like vegetable sheep in the New Zealand mountains.

The plain growls like a sheep dog and the clouds gain mass and finally weep.

I circle them again strangely uneasy about their watery release.

Rain is good, I remind myself.

Rain is power.

Rain is electricity.

Rain is new juice in the batteries.

The radio implant buzzes and I wince.

Anita, says.

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