Reading the Sky

Walking downhill on my road at the end of April, my friend and I came across clouds like smudged words in the sky. I wandered ("lonely as a cloud"?) through a book here on North American weather, a thrilling find. According to the photos -- and with no true understanding -- the closest I came to naming them was altocumulus undulatas, under "middle clouds." Well, whatever they were, they were quite beautiful and mysterious. It was like finding an erased message written on a blue chalkboard. What did it say?

The poet is like the prince of the clouds
Who haunts the tempest and laughs at the archer;
Exiled on the ground in the midst of jeers,
His giant wings prevent him from walking.

-- Charles Baudelaire, "L'Albatros," st. 4, from Les Fleurs du Mal (1861)

The photo was taken 4/29/10. Click on image to enlarge.

Float the Earth

Up way too early, I decided to walk up to the pond to see what was happening. I relished that lovely stillness, all quiet except for a mourning dove's lonely call and the distant tapping of a woodpecker. One to lull you, the other to wake you and make you pay attention. Thrillingly, countless black polliwogs were wriggling through the water like three-dimensional commas, or resting on submerged leaves, tiny tails pointed. I balanced on two rocks to get a close-up photo of them, which obviously was just not that great. (At least this time I managed to escape without a shoe full of muddy water.) That beautiful eastern light illuminated the muted April setting, placed the sky in the pond's silver bowl, and set the reflections dancing.

Here are two fitting quotes from Walden by Henry David Thoreau:

"It is well to have some water in the neighborhood, to give buoyancy to and float the earth." -- Henry David Thoreau

Later in Walden he writes:

"There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of nature and has his senses still." -- Henry David Thoreau

Truth.

Click on images to enlarge. Maybe then you can see the polliwogs in the lower picture. Both photos taken 4/11/10.