As I look out today the sun is covered in clouds yet again and my mood sinks as the rain comes down. I can’t change the weather so maybe I should try and think about the clouds in a different way.
There are many types of cloud, stratus, cirrus, cumulus and more, you can look at them all at http://nenes.eas.gatech.edu/Cloud/Clouds.pdf

This photograph of clouds was taken last month at the pebble beach at Cold knap, Barry, looking over the Bristol Channel to the Somerset Coast.
The science of clouds is fascinating and so are the heavenly stories, I still remember the God I got to know in Sunday School around 75 years ago and who spoke to Moses from a cloud.
I won’t elaborate on God and heaven in the clouds as you can read an excellent article on cloud symbolism in Christianity by Creighton Lovelace, Pastor of Danieltown Baptist Church in Forest City, North Carolina, who is also a member of the Cloud appreciation Society. His entertaining look at biblical clouds is at https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Cloud-Article.pdf
I thought I’d left my Sunday school idea of God behind me long ago but someone rather like him seems to have sneaked his way into my poem.
A CLOUDY VISION The engineer said - I will design machines to be perfectly matchless -each one will have the same function but none will be identical - for my imagination is boundless and incorporates hydrostatics, hydrodynamics and the physics of surface tension. Sometimes my inventions will swirl like the tails of a thousand milk white mares - swim across the sky like a shoal of shining mackerel -fly though the air immaculate as swans - skip over the horizon as lively as a hare. My devices will be ribbons that entwine the mountain tops - sail like ocean liners trailing wisps of steam. Sometimes my equipment will hang over the heads of men as heavy as the bellies of grey celestial cows, their udders dripping onto the earth. Often words and images will fail to circumscribe the endless variation of my tremendous flights of fancy. People will christen my contrivances with Latin appellations - stratus, cumulus and cirrus. They will describe my designs as lonely or dark, be overwhelmed by the deluge I release but dance fervent prayers entreating the delivery of the precious cargo carried by my contraptions. I am the Heavenly Engineer, I float across the heavens dripping my creations onto the earth. Although each dribble is lost in the fall each drop will rise again in mist and sap and blood.
To try to demonstrate that I can write a poem about clouds which is not permeated by the misty shade of a deity here’s a short poem that features a cloud that is the lowest of the low and which can make us feel as lonely and lost as it’s possible to be but which is, like all clouds, truly amazing.
IN A FOG hidden among the trees I’m all wrapped up in a misty cocoon the fog is so heavy it fails to hold itself together and liquifies on the twigs and tiny drops fall on my hair and on the ground and there is silence except for the sound of small erratic drips in this interval between the amniotic fluid and the fall into the moisture of the earth to flow through streams and oceans uplifted again and again into mist and clouds and astonishing fog Anne Bryan
Thanks Anne. Really enjoyed your amazing poems. Such lovely words! A pleasure to read. The photo set the scene and was beautiful. Wish I’d been there! Liked both links. The cloud link was very clear and easy to learn and I was tickled by the pastors thoughts on clouds. A lovely start to the day today.
Your ability to make something, always surprising and beautiful, never fails even with unreachable objects. Thanks.
A joy in the inbox.
Both fab Anne. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Anne,
I have read both of your poems a few times and found more to enjoy each time. I always love the science behind your writing: I enjoyed the fact that God is described as an engineer with inventions, designs, devices and equipment as well as creations! Your word choices in both are beautiful and make me envious that I don’t spend long enough when I write to bring the clarity and depth that you always achieve. I felt God was in the second one too? Though, I’m an atheist, so maybe not?
I hope your writing helped to lift your mood.
The photograph is certainly a delight to distract oneself.
Anyway, this has been a lovely start to my day and I shall be reading them again later.
Thanks Julia, I enjoyed writing this blog. I’m an atheist too but you are right, God is in both poems. He still insists on sitting on a cloud in a corner of my mind regardless of the fact that I don’t beleive in Him.
Many thanks Anne . Both poems say it beautifully. The intense complexity and beauty of natural phenomena and the wonder of how scientific order is created in nature. Thought provoking. Especially true of the fog, we often find ourselves in.
Morning Anne. Inspired by your poems and info. I stuck my head out of the door and see we have Cumulonimbus clouds here. In your first poem, I loved how you portrayed God as having a left and right centred brain, Engineer and Artist. I admire your poetry Anne and particularly your scientific take on things which you express so beautifully and eloquently. In your second poem I love the line ‘the fog is so heavy it fails to hold itself together’. In my opinion you captured the ‘miracle’ of The Rain Cycle. Both wonderful poems.