A Prairie Journal ™
Spring-Summer 2010
What the Clouds Tell Me
It’s a long time
since a cloud said anything helpful.
-- William Stafford
Clouds in Storm
The ever-changing sky is movable art and always fascinating. Beauty lies not only in cumulus clouds in a blue sky, but also in storm clouds. I often photograph bare or budded branches and ponder the message of their script, written on a parchment sky. —Wilda Morris
To see an enlargement,
click on thumbnail.
I.
Dense clouds pile up
in the morning sky, striated
like walls of a limestone ridge
along the Mississippi. They tell me
truth can lay heavy
on the horizon of relationships,
that truth is not always words
or facts, but finds its home
in the gaps between things,
the interstices between us.
II
With my granddaughter
I walk out under gray clouds,
backdrop to budding branches.
The clouds tell me they will fall
in droplets to nurture new growth.
They tell me what to do with my life.
Copyright © 2010. Wilda Morris. All rights reserved.
Quotation from Stafford's poem, “Stray Moments,” from Even in Quiet Places (Lewiston, Idaho: Confluence Press, 1996).