Jimmy Santiago Abacas “Cloudy Day’ uses simile and personification to contend that a man pondering over his current situation is grateful for what he has in life despite everything he has been through. The poem starts off with the speaker, an incarcerated man, sitting outside in the exercise yard in his prison Jacket. He describes that it is a very windy day. He is watching the vigilant guard on the tower loading his cap so that the wind doesn’t knock it down “held his cap at the sudden gust.”
The inmates and the guard sitting with them listen to the wind making noise as it goes through a hollow rock. As the speaker sits there reminiscing about the day he was incarcerated, he recalls sitting on the back of the police car with his hands and ankles chained, and the officer pointing at the big silver water thank sticking up, to advise him that they were approaching the facility.
The speaker still pondering over being in prison, he is still in disbelieve “Sometimes it is such a dream, a dream, where I stand up in the face of the wind, like now. ” He has been in prison for 4 years and 3 days; daily he has seen how men have become cruel or cold, or even killed, but despite all of that, he is still able to love, love himself and feel good. Even though he has nothing to his name, he feels that he has everything.
