Anette Prehn, Member 63,419, appreciates the sky from her home in Denmark.  This poem was translated for her by Heidi Flegal, who suggested she send it to us.  It was used as lyrics, set to music by Rasmus Skov Borring in 2019.  Image:  Altocumulus with virga over Denmark © Soren Hauge

Like Shifting Clouds on High

A cloudscape ever-changing,
an endless voyage in the sky:
travellers re-arranging
their shapes as they go by.
In splendid, silent swirls they show
that wonders come and wonders go.
They offer up a lesson,
this whimsical procession
of shifting clouds on high.

As children we lay gazing
at fairy tales in shades of white.
In dappled sunlight lazing
we felt profound delight.
To see it through a childʼs bright eyes
– this big parade of small goodbyes –
recalls whatʼs lost, yet seeing
brings back the joy of being
with shifting clouds on high.

The boundless white collective
that travels on the windy tide
gives us a new perspective,
and mirrors whatʼs inside.
From Natureʼs wisdom take your cue.
She says: “Find that courageous you!
Your heart from joy and sorrow
can shape a new tomorrow
like shifting clouds on high.”

By Anette Prehn, Member 63,419 (© 2019)

David Brown wrote to us saying “at the time of writing I was living on a hill in rural Northland, NZ. Very late one night I stepped outside and saw the strangest cloud formation I’ve ever seen: thin, perfectly regular lines of cloud stretching across the sky. They looked for all the world like the perfect lines drawn in sand by a Japanese wooden rake; you could see the stars between them and the undersides were lit up by the moon. It struck me like bars of a window. I went inside and wrote this simple haiku:”

Moonlight rakes the clouds
Etching fine silver lines that
Starlight fears to cross

© David Brown

Image Credit: A view above the cloud streets, Union, Indiana, US. © Beth Fluto

Buckshot Dot, AKA Dee Strickland Johnson, wrote this poem in 1940 when she was 9 years old.  The image we’ve chose to accompany it is by Linda Holtby, Member 20,966, of faces in the clouds over the Hamble river, England.

THE OLD OLD MAN

His beard is so long it touches his toes.
If I were to paint him, he’d have a red nose.

He does not talk, nor gather a crowd,
For this old old man — is only a cloud.

© Dottie Jean Strickland* 1940, age 9

Cloud enthusiast, Simon Rickman, sent us this Haiku and accompanying image.  Seeing everyday objects in clouds (and other objects) is called Pareidolia and he told us this picture is a good example of a head in the clouds.

Cloud Face

it is no wonder
they call me ‘the daydreamer’
my head’s in the clouds!

© Simon Rickman

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