Cumulus clouds towering like mountains, boiling and roiling up above the plains, cauliflower crisp at the growing tops, losing definition and melting into wispy cotton-candy fluff as the cloud moves on -Cumulus Mammatus drooping multiple, witchy breasts that offer no succour beyond pouring rain from the grey underside of who knows how big a storm – photographs of motherships ominous over Texas – clouds I will never likely see in person, but regard in awe at nature’s power – mixing warm-moist air from the Gulf, hot-dry South-western and Mexican, with cool-dry Canadian in an unholy cocktail that drops twisters on the panhandle and whisks away more than Dorothy and Toto in Kansas… On a calmer day, coruscating cirrus mackerel-sky not to be confused with expanding contrails crisscrossing the blue, and definitely not the chemtrail nightmares of conspiracy theorists, make a halo around the sun on high, or the moon at night, whilst grey-day lowering stratus brings dampening drizzle followed by heavier rain as a front closes in – clouds caught on mountain tops or melting as mist in valleys when the sun comes up – clouds layered in all their glorious types from the ground up to the realm of the noctilucent and sprites seen only from space – a mystery not yet explained by Atmospheric Physics – and all possessed of an ever changing beauty that cloaks and swirls around our blue planet…
© Andrew Wilson, 2026
I missed the deadline for Mr Linky over at dVerse Poets Pub, where Lisa or Li in Poetics, invited us to write about Weather, something that Global Warming consequences have forced everybody around the world, to pay attention to ( and not just we weather obsessed Brits!). Li also gave a shout out to some previous posts on weather, including mine as guest editor in 2024.
Stuart McPherson wrote a prompt about weather in 2012.
Victoria C. Slotto wrote about it in 2015.
Andrew Wilson wrote about it in 2024.
I am posting it for Open Link Night #413 with Live Edition.
My kind of poem, I sit for hours just watching clouds…so beautiful and mesmerizing, excellent poem! 🌫️
When you grow up in countryside with no mountains, then clouds are the biggest things you see – thanks, Cara…
This is incredibly stunning! I especially love; “clouds caught on mountain tops or melting as mist in valleys when the sun comes up.” ❤️❤️
You always give the strongest comments, Sanaa, thanks so much!
As someone who loves cloud gazing and nature and just staring out the window at birds and rain and all… This poem hit home a bit… A lot has changed thanks to the climate changes…
As someone who loves cloud gazing and nature and just staring out the window at birds and rain and all… This poem hit home a bit… A lot has changed thanks to the climate changes…
If anything, climate change is bringing us an ever greater variety of weather with its accompanying clouds, which are of course, as beautiful as ever – glad you liked it Reelika…
I love looking at clouds, so this poem really struck me, Andrew. There are so many wonderful images here–the cauliflower and mother ship–and it has a beautiful sound and flow. It was great to hear you read it today!
Thank you so much, Merril, I enjoyed hearing you read too – you have a lovely measured delivery…
I loved hear you reading about clouds, and I find them so important… today was a cloudy day until evening came.
I do my best to signpost the pauses and emphasis in my poems, but there is no substitute for hearing read aloud, is there Björn…
I, too, love cloud-watching, but I have never seen as many jet trails in the sky as these!
We’re a small country and we are in the path of flights between Europe and America,,,
Our back garden view is of mountains and we can see the incoming weather as it rolls towards us. Clouds pay an important part! Lovely poetry.
Thanks so much, Freya, when we lived in Ireland, we were ten minutes walk from the Atlantic so big skies with weather rolling in…