If you know of clouds, you know that their bodies form around infinitesimally sized specs of dust. Moisture condensing on the surface of what, otherwise, would go unobserved to either of us. Clouds, I think, are collections of quicksilver dreams, cast loose by the hopeless and the hopeful from seashores or mountaintops or, really, anywhere between. Many billions of thoughts coalesce for the occurrence of a cloud, each of them a nucleus for a single drip of a cloud.

Growing up, afternoons were spent running barefoot through Carolina fields, racing summertime clouds that gathered fury from the heavy humidity. Their rain darkened the day as they lit it with flashes of lightning, rattling windowpanes with thunder. These were anxious clouds; brief and gregarious in their presence, filled with thoughts of leaving. Their wake giving way to cool evenings spent chasing lightning bugs to be carried in mason jars. The first time I ventured to sea I was frightened by the concrete clouds that sat just on the water’s surface, fog, trapping nearby the memories I hoped to lose. The Atlantic’s fog shapeshifted in the moonlight for days on end at the tempo of silent thoughts. This heavy grey cloud was well-settled in its dampened spirits. Another cloud, this one in Utah, swirled above, releasing long streams of snow everywhere but where I sat. This cloud took nor gave to me. It rejoiced in release. I will tell you I have watched clouds beyond each coast, and with certainty, every place has a different kind of cloud. I hope wherever you find yourself you look to the sky and watch. Of course, their differences can be scientifically explained by their mesoscale climate, but it’s more likely explained in the thoughts they have been gifted by the places they wander across.

Clouds are given life in the image of the dreams that they carry and rearrange. In the Southwest, they breathe life to sunrises. On the ocean, they flatten every sliver of light with the color grey.  Clouds come in numberless shapes, heights, and temperaments; qualities spurred by the nuclei from which they are given and release.  

That is Of Clouds. A reflection inspired by a dear friend who trades pictures of clouds with me from all around.