Jane Chirurg, Member 64,917 is a cloudspotter from New York.  She recently sent one of her poems inspired by the clouds over the city.

Image credit: Sunrise over Vermontville, Adirondacks, New York, US © Edward Murphy

Clouds

What moves you?
What creates and uncreates
Your changing shapes?
Your ruffled edges?

How do you take on sunsets?
Yet emerge the next morning
Pristine as newly laundered linen?
Virginal yet again
As if the sunset had never happened.

Clouds can suddenly appear
Like smoke rising over a mountain
Or as suddenly retreat
As a panda suddenly becomes a dragon

Sure, clouds appear to be carefree
But actually they are highly resentful
And are apt to be full of rain.

That is probably because they are forever pretending
To be something they aren’t
One minute a lamb.
Another a bear

They look like they are going
But they change by the time they arrive

As they all dance the Celestial Fox Trot
In the brillant blue ballroom of the infinite sky

Clouds Addendum

When we have reduced the world to bone and ashes
The clouds will still be here
And they will gift us with an ever -changing ceiling
Of rabbits and dragons and cloudmallows

Stay clouds,
Please stay
You must stay so we can still live in unimaginable beauty
While all around us lies in ruin

© Jane Chirurg

Guo Wei, Member 57,319, sent us a poem that he wrote after seeing dozens of large horseshoe vortex formations develop one after the other over Xiamen, China.  He has kindly translated it into English for us and sent a photograph he took of the sky that day.

Miracle

• An Unbelievable Afternoon of Seeing over a Dozen Big Horseshoe Vortex Clouds one after another

When the sky’s inspiration explodes on a windy afternoon,
The sparse shadows of things stretch across the serene pedestrian street,
Still in my white coat, many years,
Which has been nurturing a tiny flame within my heart.

The spectacle of thousands of horses galloping suddenly unfolds,
Accompanied by the background music of the childhood version of the Journey to the West,
Which rushes out from an unknown old shop.

It seems like an invisible vortex hidden in the grey background, stirring,
And spitting out naughty children like smoke rings,
As if the desire – the source of life’s drive?
Has materialized with nothing into a masterpiece.
The children line up and vault over the huge tree in the middle of the street one after another.

Last night I shouldn’t have lost my temper,
Argued with you about whether a colander can scoop water to wash your hair.
“There really are miracles.”
I wish to watch them with you now, my daughter,
How lovely is the world in your eyes?

I stand like a white fool, rooted to the spot,
Repeatedly checking everything that slipped away during each sleepy afternoon,
Afraid that the supposed awake is a dream,
Afraid that photos will disappear like horseshoe vortex clouds, dancing and leaving no trace,
Until the curtain falls, the sky is empty,
No one has looked through the ecstasy within my coat,
Like an invisible man, transparently crying, stirring,
The cries of the traders around that has been passed from mouth to mouth for centuries.
The waterfall of Dichondra shakes, hooves become lighter, grey-grey hue remains.

© Guo Wei 2024

Vyacheslav Konoval is a poet from Kyiv, Ukraine. Many of his poems have been translated into Spanish, French, Italian and Polish but this is one he wrote in English for CAS members to enjoy.

Image: “A Sunset over Kiev, Ukraine” © Vera Uzhva

A dark blue cloud crawls across the sky

A dark blue cloud crawls across the sky,
It rains every day.
As if punishment is pouring from God.

Fluffy fresh caresses,
crowded street of
stockpiled ice fragments.

My body doesn’t obey
It seemed to be dozing,
limps tiredly in laziness.

© Vyacheslav Konoval

Sara Austin Bailey, member 50,249 sent us this cloud-inspired poem from her home in North Carolina.

Moira Lazarus is a song-writer and poet from London.  This is a poem she wrote a few years ago, just watching the London sky darkening.  Image: A sunset over Shepherds Bush, London, UK. (Red sky at night, Shepherd’s delight). © David Stening

From My Bedroom

I lie on my back and watch clouds travel
slow and thick
inked by the falling dusk, folds of velvet
blanking out the light.

This, then, is night.
A tipping over into another world,
an encroaching spell.

The sky holds pewter clouds now and is the colour of moonstone.
Second by second they are darkening faster,
blackening the roofs, hovering over chimneys like old smoke,
the sun almost gone.

Inside, closed curtains and artificial light prepare to
ward off the visceral intensity of night.

But I would like to fly
straight into this sky
ride the clouds to wherever they blow.
I would like to let the wild night flow.

Dawn will be here soon enough.

© Moira Lazarus, October 2016

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