A Study of Clouds I. The morning sky hangs in a heathery blue, the color of the soft warm blanket you carried everywhere when you were two. The rising sun begins to paint her canvas, eastern strokes of orangsicles and lemonade. II. Scattered evenly north to the horizon, the clouds hang like cotton candy without any piglet pink or soft baby blue, just their shimmery contrast against the Aegean sea of sky. Their bellies hang flat to the earth; they’re sitting upon an invisible ceiling, and their big white wigs on round heads puff and rise into endless space above. III. Over my head a shroud The sky it fills with cloud Which moves so swift, as one Nowhere a sign of sun The sound it booms so loud The light it breaks through proud The storm has just begun Mother nature has come undone IV. I stare through the oval window gazing at the sky on the other side, the plane’s wing in my periphery. Tens of thousands of feet in the air, we’re cutting through the cloud formations. Land of the Giants cotton beings that move and change like a flowing river: bears and angels, horses and happy faces. I feel both giddy as a kid and contemplative as a wise old owl, in awe to be up here where the heavens can whisper to me. V. Like water washing over stones along Clear Creek, the clouds pour themselves down the mountain and cascade over the trees into the valley. The heavens mingle with the earth and speak in mystical voices about all there is to see and feel, if only you’d allow your eyes to glide slowly over nature’s beauty and feel the breath of the living as you go. VI. They aren’t really clouds. Though they are white whispers on a blue velvet cloth, Like clouds, these streaks across the sky. Pointing like arrows to where they go In their flying metal caravans Pulled to and fro. It’s such a show. Have you ever seen it? Looked up and saw a Celtic plaid of blue and white Exhaustion of people moving, always moving Decorating the sky?
This poem is also part of a collection I put together called Little Morsels of Delight.
