I sat and I watched as the clouds sailed on by,
Majestically striding and marching so high.
No reason to hurry.
No chance of a scurry.
They simply decided to glide ’cross the sky.

Patches I saw tried to squeeze into view
Behind the vast army, I saw hints of blue.
The whites and the greys
Just dissolved on their ways,
And lightened the sky with a bright azure hue.

The heavens touched earth when you started to cry.
Those who’d hung out their washing decided to sigh.
Soil drinks of your shower
Farmers toast your growth power.
Then you take of your bounty as you simply glide by.

© Paul Davis

I see horses galloping like saffron wind
Across the sunset prairie sky;
With manes and tails aflame like streams of fire,
Bright steeds of cumulus design,
White-winged and wondrous;
Wrought of clouds and molten gold -
They draw the chariot of the Sun
Through violet canyons of the coral-cave sea
Where Neptune’s treasures lie.

Warriors of godly mien upon these stallion wraiths
Appear to ride,
With cirrus cloaks embroidered by each shaft of light
Full billowing behind curved sunglanced swords,
Their prancing wake paints mackerel patterns
In the tide.

Then the wind lies down along the beach
As purple slowly prisms crimson’s hue
Through indigo’s unfathomable black.
Soft shadows sigh across the haunted sea,
Then darkly rise ……
Velveting the vaulted vesper heaven -
Where only Godesses may linger, scattering their jewels
Among the aeon-counting stars.

© Indrani Ananda
Brighton, UK

The giant sky what a fun place to play,
Magical white forms to uncover today
A giant bear with paws high above,
Baseball bat, baseball glove

Faces abound in the boundless white,
Big scary creature, o’ what a fright!
Heart shaped cloud in a blue endless sky,
Tap dancing bear that goes tap dancing by.

So many objects never seen before,
A pot bellied man having a snore
Eyes staring down to the ground below,
if you never look up you will never know.

So gaze to the sky to see what’s to see,
Enjoy the search with others like me
Be amazed, don’t waste a minute,
Ya got to look up if you want to play in it

© Michael B. Davis

They enter on their own time
shifting eternally until called down to earth as rain
where the land
loses that moment of shadow drift.

People sing about them and dance
recite wisdom tales of accumulations
and watch for their return.

We are the children of their moisture
lapping their aftermath
and memorizing how the cloud cover
stretches across the vast plains

and smoothes all life into a gray world
shapeshifting our fears.

© David A Rachlin
Stow, Massachusetts, USA

A geography of clouds drifts
across my sun-bed sky.
Tectonic plates shift
valleys split
form continents, deform,
sail into new-found-lands.
Chains of islands pass -
the sand-dune sines of Norderney
Juist and Sylt
the basking curves of Brac and Hvar
Korcula
Peljesac.
Now Corsica and lizard-Cyprus join
all the scorpion islands of the south.

Myth breaks in –
through tamarisk tails
Neptune rises headless –
great thighs stretching into sky.
A ghostly head, punctured with azure eyes
swells hydrocephalic with rain
turns feline grey, speeds on
till nothing`s left
but one fine eyebrow arching
in the clearest sky.

© Ann Segrave
Plakias, Crete 2010
visit her website here

Not yet
A droplet in your mother’s azure eye
Watching the undulates roll by
Amidst sparkling castellanus
Foretelling

So small
A lone cumulus, the ‘normal’ one
In the middle on its own
Too high for stratus, too low for cirrus
Too low for contrails.

Tongue twister
Say it: cumulus humilis!
You can’t.
Not really fast.
And a lot.

Growing
Shooting up towards the stratus
If the not stars, at least the cirrus!
Like congestus, with a destiny
Of density.

Dissipation
Depression, breaking you down, fracturing
Nothing is right, and you can’t find the rhymes
You can’t find the clouds
Contrails reach out.

Cumulonimbus
Hard to say, easy to judge
Big like fudge, sky-terror but gentle nature
Leader of clouds, enemy of planes
Protector

Looking back,
Below, once a drop in the ocean
Now in motion to something great
Until you… precipitate
Ready for the next evaporation

Shadowy white from faraway planes stream
You can only look on and wait for the sea to dream
Again
Of a cloud.

© Shakira Dyer

I see you
And when I catch sight of you
You have already been seen
In a different form
By an earlier person
In another place.
And whilst I am looking
You are already changing
Being no longer what you were
At my first glance.
Now moving from this place
And this moment
To be caught by eyes
Other than my own
That will view you
Altered,
And elsewhere.
An enigma.
Moving through shape and time
Your pace and place set by the wind
And by the turning of this disc
That we, the earthbound,
Inhabit,
Trapped below the theatre
Of your rise and fall.

© Jacqueline Mai September 2007

Genus Stratus
Genus stratus lies low in the hills
Waiting for strays and lost wills
It cloaks the land in its mysterious shroud.
A misty blanket, a ghostly cloud.

It keeps the secrets of ancestors past,
The Earls, the Ladies, the hidden outcasts.
Don’t try to trick it, it will always know.
Respect Genus Stratus, or down you will go.

You can also see:
“Canvas of a Blue Sky” by Freddie.
“Clouds” by Mia.
and “Sunset” by Ellie.

Clouds

Would you think a person was crazy if they told you a cloud was pink?
Would you think a person was crazy if they told you clouds were alive?
Would you?

Clouds are humans that have not yet been born,
Imagine looking at a cloud and saying
That could be my new sister!

Beth (aged 9)

–

Blue Sky

Floating forward to its never-ending destination in the sky,
Bouncing over, house to house,
Never the same, always different,
Grey, pink, red and purple,
Never simple, always complex,
A transforming delight that everyone loves,
Never stopping, always moving,
Playing bumper cats moving into each other,
A fun fair? A room of blue?
What next will the clouds do?

Edward (aged 8)

–

Clouds

Clouds float in candy cotton puffs.
Laid gently on the blue canvas sky.
Dark and mysterious as they drift across the sky.
They die and reform as they change shape.
Never the same, changing every second.
The sun paints the clouds,
Orange and pink
On the navy blue ceiling of the world.

Bibi (aged 8)

–

Clouds

Can you see the endless clouds
Continuously splashed on a blue carpet?
They always change, rocking in an ultramarine ocean,
Bristling like the beards of ancestors.
The sky appears indigo and navy blue.
Then the hand of God abstractly paints a yellow streak,
That becomes lightning.
The clouds cry with sadness
Shedding a million tears.

Chaaya (aged 9)

–

Clouds

I see the clouds slowly floating by
Up high in the clear blue sky
Gentle, creamy, whipped clouds
Changing shape – a pig or a butterfly?
Drifting, the candyfloss clouds fly
Underneath the summer sky.
I see the clouds drifting by.

Heather (aged 9)

–

Clouds

Drifting through the sky they go,
When they’ll stop, I don’t know!

Dancing high up in the air,
Where they go, I don’t care!

Floating high above the ground,
Then, spinning all around!

Clouds are wonderful,
Clouds are magical!

Anna (aged 9)

–

Clouds

Clouds, clouds,
Why are they white?
Why not red or pink?
Why are clouds fluffy, wet and moist?
Clouds, clouds
Why do you cry?
Why do you cry all over our land?
Clouds, clouds
Why do you fly?
Why don’t you fall?
Clouds, clouds
Why do you make loud claps of thunder?
Why don’t you talk?

Jolyon (aged 9)

–

Clouds

Turquoise mountains,
Don’t bother counting,
I’m normally white,
But not at night,
Red and blue right up high,
Purply pink in the sky,
A tart dash of red,
Above my head,
I taste of purple delight,
Swathed in white,
I have a hue,
Night sky blue,
If I collapse,
The world will fail,
But do not fret,
I am not frail.

Patrick (aged 9)

–

Clouds

I am a cloud,
My hair is crystal white
I dance gracefully across an azure stage,
I change shapes as I glide
I dance because I like the music up in the sky,
My dance will never end
I’ve been forced not to stop,
It’s really hard
My legs ache,
I need to stop, to sleep,
But I can’t.

Isabel (aged 8)

–

Clouds

The candy floss clouds
So delightful to watch
They float across the sky
And behind the horizon

Changing shape from
Dolphins to pigs
To cellos to hens
As they dance across the azure

Colour mixing
Peach to crimson
Scarlet to violet
Leaping across the moonlight

The candy floss clouds
So delightful to watch
They float across the sky
And behind the horizon

Tilly (aged 9)

–

Clouds will be…

Swaying, drifting, darting, shining,
While flowing through the sun-lit sky.
Balletic poses pirouetting through the air,
Mysterious yet shining everywhere.
Dark and frightening, a storm brings swathes of indigo and forget-me-not blue.
Clouds ever-changing to different shapes.
Small but complex and full of light.
Clouds still scud through they sky at night.

Cressida (aged 8)

–

Magical Transformations

Constantly changing,
Air brushed sky,
Never lonely
They stay up there until they cry
Painted on a cerulean sky
Forever analysing the Earth

Theo (aged 9)

–

Clouds

The sky is blue
The grass is green
But if it was the other way round I would start laughing
Then fall through the ground
But luckily we have clouds
Gentle and frail
Who catch all the paint from the great artist’s pail
It’s lovely just looking at the gentle clouds
That’s why plants hate being stuck in the ground
So they climb up the wooden walls of the trees
Tendrils twisting ever higher
Reaching for the sky
Escaping the green below
Upwards to the blue beyond

Sam (aged 8)

–

The Great Expanse

The great expanse of the sky is filled with the joy of clouds,
Sunset light seeps through me making a magnificent view,
My soft fluff will keep you warm for the night,
I swiftly float through the gates of heaven,
I fill the hearts of playing children as I turn into candy floss,
My friends gradually change their shape,
I’m going now,
Goodbye!

Sama (aged 9)

–

The Magic Arrow

The magic arrow
Created by the clouds for everyone
Transforms into a cloudy car,
A big ship that sails the sky
To a glittering goblet of beer
To a big man with a wide smile
And a big bag of sweets for the people of the world
The magic arrow in the clouds
For everyone to see.

Oscar (aged 8)

–

Upside-Down

Imagine if the world was upside-down,
Rain came up instead of pouring on the town.
The clouds would be sad when the sun would shine,
We could not tell, we could only mime.
The clouds all twisted in their dance,
Looking like they were in a trance.

Amelie (aged 9)

In the blue canvas of the sky
Painted with blue and white
Bright feathers of the sky, slashed with pink
Suspended in light
Riding in the colourful space
I am the artist of the world

Ellie (aged 9)
St John’s College School, Cambridge, UK
(you can also read the other poems by pupils from St John’s College School)