How often have you sat on your porch and watched clouds turn into dogs, sheep, castles, trees, faces, and dragons? I suspect more than once. Who hasn’t?
Yesterday while I was sitting on Susan Fuller’s porch in Rhode Island, a large white cloud became a poodle, as second one, a buffalo, and a third one, an old bearded man.
Other clouds darkened the West. The earth shook. It was 2 p.m.
I began to think about how much a cloud might weigh. After all, clouds are made of water and water is heavy.
Even so, when I look at clouds, like yesterday’s, my imagination tells me they’re weightless, like fog on the spine of a meadow at dawn.
Yet, there’s often a dramatic difference between your imaginative reality and your scientific reality. Both, of course, are true on different levels.
In your imagination, clouds are light and fluffy, indeed, even weightless. In the sky it’s a different matter, a fully mature thunderstorm cloud weights 2.3 billion pounds or 1.4 million tons.
You’ve got to admit, knowing a cloud can weigh 1.4 million tons rearranges the poetics of clouds hanging heavy in the West.
Go ahead, give it a shot. Write a poem using this opening line as your prompt:
“I fell in love under a 2.3 billion pound cloud.”
Photo Credit: Roger Kirby
