Posted in Eternal moments, Festivals, Nature, Reflections on the everyday, tagged Clouds, St. Patrick's Day, sunrise on March 18, 2022| Leave a Comment »
A jet climbs the vault of the sky, streaming a hot pink contrail just above bright Venus at sunrise.
Bare trees silhouetted against deep pink clouds. The earth gracefully turns toward its guiding star.
Birds cleave the sky far below the air traffic—a cacophony of song not present even two days ago.
The airplane passes overhead and beyond, disappearing in the western sky leaving a pink track parallel to an aircraft that passed not long before.
The day has begun.
Posted in Nature, Reflections on the everyday, tagged Clouds, consciousness, contrails on November 13, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Peerless blue day driving east, sky brightening, sun not yet risen. Clear cantaloupe colored horizon, scattered shooting stars of short airplane contrails falling like fireworks.
Later in the morning, setting out trash at the curb. Skyward two contrails form an intersection the height of the sky, dwarf the earth, impossible to miss. Marks the spot, so near, so far…we are all here, just now, in time.
Posted in Nature, Reflections on the everyday, tagged Clouds on September 18, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Full at 7:13 AM, the view of the moon was nixed by cirrostratus, stratus and altocumulous, a mixed cloud deck that held its place as our planet rotated eastward.
The first hint of the coming sun whispered in glowing pink on the underside of those clouds and progressed through intense salmon into a gold tinged riot of unearthly order. Seraphim on high as water droplet, light and elevation combined to create a sky more beautiful than the divine dreams of any Renaissance artist.
Available for free, I enjoyed this inspired scene through my windshield as I drove eastward from the daily ritual of taking children to school. On westward return, a stunning half-rainbow hung in a sky devoid of storm clouds.
Heaven on earth. Happens most days, just depends where you look.
Posted in Reflections on the everyday, tagged Clouds, wind on January 29, 2010| Leave a Comment »
It’s cold today, the snow is dry and humorless. 16 F, without calculating windchill.
Bitter temperature, wind that bites through any coat? Must be time for a walk.
A vast field of stratocumulous is broken here and there by the solar disk. I cannot help but wander along those edges.
One side of those clouds faces toward the sun – too brilliant to look for long. The other side surveys the passing of life below, a dichotomy familiar to any airplane passenger.
There is sometimes vast space between those two places, up and down. The air traveler can be mesmerized, or terrified, by descent through clouds.
The half-light provided by cloud cover is distinctly different from that of twilight. Cloudy half-light, by reducing brilliant glare, enhances visibility of what is already present. Twilight reduces visibility of what is present, by giving thought to what is coming.
Around the corner and down the street. The wind has frozen my upper extremities while the powdery snow has made quick work of whatever heat my footgear was advertised as holding in. I can only laugh.
Through the air comes the high tinkling sound of a wind chime, like the song of a kachina, arresting, disconnecting, an ornament perfectly forgotten.
The solar disk is on the move and I keep going. Another chime further away, rich, sonorous, infrequent. The rustle of leaves still gripping bare branches keeps time with the wind. This language is one I only half understand. So much talk, so piercing – painful – not for its discord, but for its beauty. The depth of it is killing.
Of stratocumulous, my Field Guide to North American Weather reads, “[s]tratocumulous represent saturation and instability in a shallow layer near the surface of the earth.” That sounds about right.
Shouldn't...but Do 