Kathleen Janick, member 49,856, recently wrote this poem inspired by fog on the coast of Maine, USA

Ric Johnson wrote this poem after walking alongside the River Weaver in Cheshire, UK and was inspired by the clouds that appeared overhead. You can see more of his work on his website.

SKY PEBBLES

Tight knit, these pebbles
Although not knitted at all
If our brains were in place.

Magically magical
But truly, touchingly magical
Though impossible to touch.

As if some god had woven them
Having shouted at stray clouds
To form up and bunch in tight.

Just letting us know
Down here but looking up
That some gods value beauty.

Whether knit one, pearl one
Is this god’s speciality
Is unknown to me.

However tightly knitted they seem
We know each pebble
Has its own resolve in place.

The resolve to be fluidly individual
Unmindful of watchers
Careless of admiration.

And, of a sudden
As I looked
Change and separation all around.

Pebbles unformed themselves
Indifferent to me, or the god
And how we thought of them.

No longer pebbles
Neither galleons nor dragons
Whales, pigs nor eagles.

But spectacle and grandeur
Clouds shaping, reshaping
Each day of our lives.

Well, fancy that!

© Ric Johnson

Buckshot Dot, AKA Dee Strickland Johnson, sent us this poem reflecting on sky.  We’ve paired it with this mixed sky over the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia by Ebony Willson, Member 53,124

The Sky Without Clouds

A day without clouds is the sky at its least.
We had one here just recently.
Be they piles, or wisps, or fantastic shapes,
they continue to fascinate me.

They pose, slowly move, or they change all the time.
They’re now like a scatt’ring of sheep —
hurrying, scurrying, playing around
just below tops of the high mountain peaks.

© Buckshot Dot, AKA Dee Strickland Johnson 2022

                                ~ ~ ~ ~~ 
                    *AKA Dee Strickland Johnson

Keshet Amalia Wistenberg recently sent us this poem to share with the CAS community. We’ve paired it with an image from our Photo Gallery by Ernesto Astiazaran of a joyful cirrus face over Tucson, Arizona, US.

Vantage Point

Fribbling, trotting,
In circles abounding,
Our smidgens of forms
So dear, yet so far.

We click and we squabble,
Enwrangled, surrounding,
By godlies, by froundies,
By tresses of star.

They drift and they float
And they sweep up the foundlings,
Who live in their castles,
Their dreamy memoir.

They follow, they peer at
We short-sighting groundlings,
And ‘member it all
In their mountains on par.

When angry, we quarrel,
With teeth, steam abounding,
When they do, they weep,
As they know what we are.

We’re boorish, we’re legged,
We’re scraggle-pip-thounding,
We’re dirty and little
and thoughtless, wind scar.

They weep and they roar,
Erupt, all propounding,
They do so as schedule
Makes bare who they bar.

For us, we’re the peasants,
sca-venging, sca-rounging,
And them all the king, and the chief
And the tsar.

We imagine a vastly
Built ever so rounding,
For us in the center,
The jam in the jar.

‘Truly?’ ‘Tis factin?’
We shriek, throbbing, pounding,
For deep’st we know’st
Our knowings off par.

The clouds, are our windows,
From here to the bounding,
Old boundary of here
To the great world their from,

The clouds are our windows,
From here to the bounding,
Old boundary of here
To the great world to come.

© Keshet Amalia Wistenberg

David Oscarson, supporting member 40614 sent us this poem he recently composed. It centres around falling snow and encroaching clouds that cover the mountains.

Sherman Schapiro, Member 56,083, sent this short poem inspired by our Halloween Cloud-a-Day – an Altocumulus ‘supercilium’, a cloud term yet to be recognised as an official one, spotted haunting the sky over San Anselmo, California, US by Lee FitzGerald (Member 50,400).

Heavenly “Boo!”

Eerie skies above,
like tentacles descending.
Clouds for Hallowe’en.

© Sherman Schapiro

Sherwin Berger, member 18,239, sent us his latest cloud inspired poem entitled “Nature’s Magicians”.

Guo Wei, Member 57,319, wrote this poem after seeing Circumzenithal Arc when leaving home one morning.  The image shared here was taken on a walk in Beichen Mountain, Xiamen, China

《解构与重组——环天顶弧之歌》

每一天
我站在原地
万事万物流过我
以气息、话语、文字
咀嚼的质地
或只是纯粹明暗的光线
渐变的波长、频谱
穿透我
用一切确定与不确定性，将我
扭转、分散、符号化

风把我的碎片卷曲、打包
投向高空的尘埃和冰晶，以及大气中
无法自证其存在的颗粒
于是我习惯性在清早眺望太阳凝望的方向
终见天空微笑

© Guo Wei

Sherman Schapiro (Member 56,083) of Eureka, CA, USA wrote this Haiku after seeing the Cloud-a-Day of 14th August 2022. We’ve accompanied it with the image used in that Cloud-a-Day which was taken by Celia Quinn (member 53,053) and shows Cirrus uncinus clouds over Mount Pinos in the Transverse Ranges, South California, US

Cirrus uncinus

Those wispy wonders;
Kitelike clouds fly high above,
Spirits in the sky.

© Sherman Schapiro

Ric Johnson has written “Cloudship, Spaceship”, a poem based on this photograph he took which was obviously a flying saucer disguised as a cloud!

CLOUDSHIP, SPACESHIP

Oh, gorgeous saucer
Cruising, skirting
Clouded skies.

Slim saucer surveying
A cloudship sweeping
In trim exercise.

Cloudship as spaceship
Skims on patrol
Perhaps us they despise.

Camouflaged spaceship
Cunning as cloud
And quietly spies.

Marauding she gleams
A sauntering dreamer
Our world she defies.

Assessing, digesting
Thinking, deciding
As time flies.

Such spirit of travel
Exploring new dawns
While thought multiplies.

In our world unread
We battle away
Unaware of surprise.

Deceiving me here
She’s nothing but vapour
As the crow flies.

Gleaming creature depart
Away from our years
Leaving us to our skies.

Unforming, dissolving
Maybe sensing our sorrows
As Earth cries.

© Ric Johnson – Another Liverpool Poet

Rachel Jacobs, Member 55,934 wrote told us she “created a poem for the firmly-minded purpose of the well-being of the clouds”.  We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

The Clouds of Life

A round of life, and that of death

Who beckons those away.

Who steals the knife, who steals the breath

Of those who yearn to stay.

Of brevity, of shortness

Rather infant fresh demise,

Of lives and souls of drifting wisps,

Of youth with all but lies.

To them they are of Cirrus

Who crane their necks to see,

A faintly there, but there alas,

Of actuality.

Of those who seek revenge,

Who sought and seek and went,

To all the spitting measures

But never reached content.

Altocumulus they turn,

Their souls reach up and are,

Through hills and dales they try and fail

A moon without a star.

And gentlemen and ladies

With motives good and true, 

Who shine through after darkness

And honour through and through,

These noble ones at heart,

Who learned in the lore,

Become all the fair cumulus

In kindness evermore.

And it comes, by-and-by,

From solid, sinking, be,

To serene drifting sighs,

Of man dustpaned by me.

Swept away by rolls of clouds

With kerchief, breath and shroud,

For life nor death can sunder

All the love to man endowed.

© Rachel Jacobs 2022