Nick Houvras, Member 7,367 sent us his poem “A Wish”

Image: Crepuscular Rays over Somerset, England © Helen Crawley

A Wish

Don’t you wish you were a cloud?

Flying free where ever the wind sent you!

Looking down from up above on sunny ground!

Or wet leaves you sent your water to.

And then you slowly disappear from the heavens that held you.

Just as the earth holds us we too go with or without a sin.

But everyone asks where did that cloud go?

And so do all of us here now on Mother Earth!

© Nick Houvras, 2023

Li Zeyou, Member 65,190 from Jiangsu province, China, sent us his cloud inspired poem. We’ve paired it with an image by Nicholas Jiang of a silver lining moment over Daning Park, Shanghai.

The clouds are lonely,
They often walk alone in the vast sky.
When we are on the road and look up –
How carefree they are.

The clouds are lively,
They always cling together and form a whole.
When we stand on the mountaintop and look down –
They are like the sea.

The clouds are free,
They are always so unrestrained.
When we sit in the garden and observe –
They change endlessly.

The clouds are complex,
They always cover one another.
When we fly through the clouds in an airplane –
They are layer upon layer.

When you are at leisure,
You might as well look up at the sky.
The clouds – these interesting things,
Surely they are worthy of our admiration.

© Li Zeyou, May 2025

Sean Bentley of Eugene, Oregon, recently discovered the Cloud Appreciation Society after reading the book RAIN by Cynthia Barnet. He wrote this poem in 2023 after reading THE INVENTION OF CLOUDS by Michael Hamblyn, the biography of Luke Howard.

Image: by Ronna Friend of distant storm clouds developing near Eugene, Oregon

Nimbus

Twenty-twenty-three. Not enough Spring yet,
despite the calendar, although the proverb
holds, and so drenched in gray
we await May’s radiant flowers.

April showers fell here anyway, back before
anyone had a name for this bleak veil,
a taxonomy or rationale, around the time
the luminous Lewis and Clark slogged their way

cross-country to what would be Oregon
―naming the glorious things they’d found:
Large-Flowered Clammy Weed,
Lady’s Slipper, Beargrass, Elkhorn,

Pronghorn, Bighorn, Bobcat.
Lewis’s Woodpecker. Clark’s
Nutcracker nagging from the branch
of Western Redcedar dripping on his tent.

Clark bitched at Clatsop, Pacific camp, week
after week after week of downpour, gloom and cold.
The “drisly… repeeted rain” fell, he wrote,
simply from a “verry lively, black Cloud.”

Just a cloud.
Unaware that Cirrus, Cumulus, and Stratus
had emerged, unveiled to English societies
by Luke Howard, Amateur Meteorologist.

Not far, I am, from where Clark was.
Out the window rain runs and drips
from cultivated Bamboo and Fan Palm.
Not far, but two centuries and more

from where it poured and poured
from the same vast Nimbostratus
that halos my sky, which I now name
Shivergiver, Drizzledrop, Dimdamper.

© Sean Bentley

1: A luminous vapor, cloud, or atmosphere about a god or goddess when on earth;
a cloud or atmosphere (as of romance) about a person or thing.
2: A rain cloud.
– Merriam-Webster Dictionary

“ …we see the lower Clouds spread themselves, till they unite in all points and form
one uniform Sheet. The rain then commences….”
– Luke Howard, “Of the Nimbus,” Essay on the Modifications of Clouds, 1803

“From the 4th of November 1805 to the 25th of March 1806, there were not
more than twelve days in which it did not rain, and of these [only] six were clear.”
– Patrick Gass, Corps of Discovery 1806

Melody Serra, Member 56,638 from New York City, sent a poem she wrote about her membership and receiving our Cloud-a-Day emails.  Image:  A Circumhorizon Arc over Colorado, US.   © Keelin

Subject: Cloud-a-Day

 On August 29, 2021 I became a cloudspotter
                            member 56,638 of the Cloud Appreciation Society!
everyday since then, an email with a photo 
             taken by another member, of the sky, lover of blue
  to think that we are all part of the same sun-filled dome 
            to think that with our creative minds we can build shapes out of 
condensed water vapor 
            it all gives me chills	( the good kind )
  close to 600 emails have 
             brought me closer to
                                    skyscapes, landscapes, and seascapes around the world
                                                have taught me the difference between cirrus, cumulus, stratus, 
                                   cumulonimbus
                                   fluctus, asperitas, noctilucent, lenticular
                                              have taught me that the beams of light that shine through the gaps 
                                   in clouds, 
                                   like ladders of light reaching down to us, are called 
                                              crepuscular rays
                                   maybe i too will see the green flash one day
	                                      or the fluffy cumulus clouds reflecting on salt flats in Humahuaca
                                   or the optical effect, stunning color play, pearlescent
                                               called circumhorizon arc
		                                           for now i count myself so lucky, 
                                                                                  each sky greets me and beckons me
                                                                                                                       “what cloud do you see?”

© Melody Serra

Carl Zephyr, Member 61,726 has a special interest in the water lifecycle: clouds, the sea, and the weather that moves them between each other. Here is another of his wonderful poems “Clouds”, written by Carl in August 2024. We’ve paired it with Mamma (Mammatus) spotted over Boca Raton, Florida by Andi & Ray Popkin

Clouds

The words trail after one another like
Echo in her final assertion
I am, I am, and you will hear it

The clouds trail after one another like
the repetition I can’t suppress
in my softer days, Cirra
beloved and wispy
high altitude,
untouchable

Lalia
my sister’s name never stays the same
nor mine,
we shift to our summer selves
Cumulo, Nimba

we rain and at last we tire
of shifting around the shapes of others
so finally, no longer beloved
we stand still

I am, I am, and you will hear it.

© Carl Zephyr

Nick Houvras, Member 7,367 sent us his cloud related poem.

Image: an angry orangutan in the sky over Cooma, New South Wales, Australia © Fran Myers

Each and everyday many join the clouds from Mother Earth!
The sun pierces their faces as they look down and mostly frown!
Some smile but when you look away then look back the smile is gone.
Thinking it may return and what you will say when it does another frown!
Apparently none are happy and the animal appears!
So many to associate to the cloud a bark, meow, roar what can it be?
Oh well we will keep looking and perhaps we will see those we’ve loved eternally!

© Nick Houvras

Thank you to Bill Kacoullas, Member 60,913, who recently sent us his poem, From On High. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Image: Sunrise over San Leandro, California, US © Richard Solomon

From On High

As cotton wool in a sky
Painted pale, bashful blule
An ephemeral delight
A pastel daily new

Its presence yet more treasured
For its transient design
Deigning to we mortals
An experience divine

© Bill Kacoullas

Professor Gordon Thompson (retired), shared his poem “Drifting Memories of Sheer Delight”.  We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Image Credit: Edward Murphy – Cirrocumulus floccus undulatus during sunset over Vermontville, Adirondacks, New York, US

Drifting Memories of Sheer Delight

On a flight toward paradise
held amid white fluffs,
—like Archangels or lesser ones—
And hovering over the creator’s crawling kind
though born wingless,
we leap now through, over, out and above
lower stratus billows
to where our aspirations shine and glow

without duck down or glue, but steel
we dart nimbly through floating water
toward our waiting star—its light a beam
from the far side of frothy bright caps—
monuments to our ambitions.

we roar mutedly over bubbly stuff
laid down like a god’s carpet to salute
our way of life and it’s rocky wandering road
while thousands of miles higher
the arched peaks of cumulonimbus
—warlike cathedrals–mount—seemingly—
to ward off mankind’s dreams.

Anvil-like Principalities tower here
as mountainous Seraphim might
to shape a dome for the firmament
as they nimbly embrace the residue
of a truant breeze of hot gas rising
from the whispery or unspoken pledges
of the earth bound seeking this more rarefied
air at the threshold of our soul’s aspirations

There, like sentinels, wispy cirrocumulus
streak across the stratosphere
aping Thrones and Dominions
to bar our youthful exuberance–
conceits that waft like mementos
or the lingering breath of old men
soon to be buried, but not forgotten
like those butterflies of my youth
that fluttered into a blue oblivion.

© G. Thompson, Jan ‘24

Leah Marcus, member 33,207, sent us two haikus she wrote.  She told us “they are meant to be read together about clouds and healing”.  We’ve paired them with an expansive display of altocumulus over Santa Rosa, California, US by Haruko Greenberg

Feeling lighter now,
Hollowed out by hours and days,
Clouds can just be clouds.

Not heavy with dreams,
Not too light with fluffy,
Just right puffs of bliss.

© Leah Marcus

Helen Hudson, Member 51,777 lives Australia and has a fabulous view of the sky from her apartment.   She sent her cloud inspired poem and told us she looks forward eagerly to receiving our Cloud-a-Day emails.  We’ve chosen an image of a rainbow amidst the storm, spotted over Redland Bay, Queensland, Australia   © Aileen Flynn to accompany Helen’s poem.

Look up, Look up

Look up, look up.
Every moment brings change.
Clouds ever there, always moving
Reminding us life’s ephemeral.

Some bring gusto, tower after tower,
Others wisp over the sky.
Maybe rain is the promise.
But others hint and fly away.
Even cloudless, never empty
Constantly open.

Look up, look up
Passing variations – grey and white.
Icy with frozen crystals
Sun reflections turn into
Vermillion, violet, coral
Dipping, diving, dancing
According to air pressure
And temperature complexities.

Look up, look up
Night and day
Our heads in the clouds
Cannot be missed
While caught in life’s toils
Look up, look up, be glad …

© Helen Hudson

Carl Zephyr, Member 61,726 has a special interest in the water lifecycle: clouds, the sea, and the weather that moves them between each other.  He recently sent in a selection of his cloud poetry. He told us “Poetry is how I’ve processed emotions since I was 8 years old. I discovered a couple years ago, during a trying time, that I could identify harbingers of my coming storms – much like the stratocumulus warns Floridians that our summer storms are near at hand.” We will share more of his poetry in the coming weeks and have paired this poem with an image of Stratocumulus over the Atlantic Ocean, near Boca Raton, Florida by Raymond Popkin

Stratocumulus

Summer cloud
full, dripping
with sun

White
Life
the warmth of an embrace
the soft cheek of a lover

He builds morning to afternoon
Expansive, impressive
arms outstretched, admiring,
Admired

his waterdrops accumulate
Cumulus
pulling him down, down,
evening comes
his face darkens:
instability
in the atmosphere

suddenly
strat, stat

and he cannot stop
giving all of himself
to the heaving seas
only to limp back up
the morning after.

© Carl Zephyr