rigorousintuition.ca

“Clouds are thoughts without words…”
~Mark Strand ~








89 Clouds: A Poetic Celebration of Clouds and Everything They Mean
https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/0 ... endy-mark/

The Clouds -the only birds that never sleep
~ Victor Hugo ~

~ Judith Bridgland ~

The sky is low, the clouds are mean,
A travelling flake of snow
Across a barn or through a rut
Debates if it will go.

A narrow wind complains all day
How some one treated him;
Nature, like us, is sometimes caught
Without her diadem.
~ Emily Dickinson ~


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaWrdwP1YH0

“One cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one's soul.”
~W. Somerset Maugham~

The parasol is the umbrella's daughter,
And associates with a fan
While her father abuts the tempest
And abridges the rain.

The former assists a siren
In her serene display;
But her father is borne and honored,
And borrowed to this day.

~ Emily Dickinson ~

Perched on the stem of a water iris yesterday, one of these little creatures let me observe it from just inches away.



The Dragon-Fly

Today I saw the dragon-fly
Come from the wells where he did lie.
An inner impulse rent the veil
Of his old husk: from head to tail
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.
He dried his wings: like gauze they grew;
Thro’ crofts and pastures wet with dew
A living flash of light he flew.

~ Alfred Lord Tennyson ~

Rainstorm in Africa

At the ripeness of season when clouds hang heavy,
the once gleeful and azure heavens morphs a dreary grey.
Blinding flashes of light and roaring echoes of legion voices
resume strive for supremacy and control of the skies, and
trees yield to the hounding of winds without whence.

Dust and debris caught in a web of spiralling wind:
a stirring helix, a slithering air, cocooning its catch.
The children in their underpants tickled by the magic
of the whirling spectacle take turns to dive into core,
hoping to be lifted too like Elijah tales at Sunday school.

Then they hear the lapping cries of mothers behind:
promising to bring down heaven on their rascally skulls.
With bolt speed the quick-limbed scatter while their
ill-fated cohorts are caught by the waist in mid-flight,
dragged home by the ears to the laughter of peers.

Then the torrents begin. First with whole aqua beads
like pellets hurled at a target for a grudge harboured
yesterday, striking swift and painful leaving no mark.
Soon we have to yell to be heard because the trouncing on
the roof overshadows all. After a bath and steaming tea, from
the windows we watch as the streets grow into a sweeping flood.

~ Kelvin Kellman ~

Jacob's Ladder

When you are on the ladder with a paint brush
twenty feet of air between you and the ground
do not swing in anger or fear at the yellow jackets.

If angels are ascending and descending the ladder
of your spine let them stretch their strands of light
into the small spaces between the discs of bone.

When you notice the way your heart can lean
toward shadow pay attention to the story
you keep telling yourself as if it were the truth.

If you are keeping track of the times you
fold the laundry or take out the garbage
you are not an angel ascending or descending.

When you curse the baby bunny eating lettuce
from the garden it is time to notice and listen
how the angels sing of mercy and bread.

If the spider is crawling up your sleeve
use your opposable thumb and consider the vow
of the bodhisattva and the levels of humility.

When you forget to roll up the car window
before the rain storm think of each silver drop
as an angel descending with blessed reminders.

~ Gary Boelhower ~







https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXQUu5Dti4g

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

~ Robert Frost ~

"The Cloud" ~ Patrick Hall