The Cloud

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Extracted from Shelley’s poem The Cloud is the following:

“I am the daughter of Earth and Water,

And the nursling of the Sky;

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain when with never a stain

The pavilion of Heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams

Build up the blue dome of air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

I arise and unbuild it again.”

Words of the poem were explained to me - The cycle of a cloud is, the poem assures us, eternal. Cloud may seem to evaporate, to disappear, but need frear no death or destruction. Instead, our cloud may “laugh at my own cenotaph”, delighting in the knowledge of its inevitable, almost Christ-like, rebirth.

And note the use of “unbuild”, rather than ‘build’. The cloud plays with us one last time, subverting our expectations, reminding us of its capricious spirit and its climatological clout. It unbuilds the blue skies, as much as the skies build the cloud. Irrepressible, eccentric, whimsical - that’s our cloud. (poems are hard for me to interpret - consequently I look for help, as I did in this case)

One of my favorite images, captured in 2010 in the Palouse area of the state of Washington, is Three Clouds. Now that I am focusing SKYWARD and not just with water, for my reflections, I am mindful of CLOUDS, and this simple image, below. I love it!

Three Clouds