In a land of clouds

img_9534-large-e-mail-viewRemember as a child, laying in the grass, looking up at the clouds?  The Nimbus or Cumulus clouds as they boiled high into the sky like great cotton candy towers, the cirrus clouds smeared across the blue like a molt of white feathers from some great celestial bird. Remember your imagination, how you dreamed you could walk up there, climb the clouds, run on the puffy hills, maybe taste the velvety white snow?  Remember that amazing land?img_0116-large-e-mail-view

And then adulthood happened.  And maybe life took you away from the innocence, took you away from those moments of pure bliss into the world of adult things, the striving, the busy-ness, the tiredness, with no time or energy for dreaming.

Yesterday I watched a storm front move in from the southwest.  The clouds were stunning, rising above the horizon like steamy burls from a great volcano, like foam churned up by an angry sea, like train loads of raw cotton spilled and piled above the landscape.  I found myself day dreaming, as I did when I was a child, about a magical world up there, an innocent world that in my imgaination I could hike and explore.  I stood there watching the clouds slowly shift and change, and after several minutes had to chuckle, realizing that like some expert mountaineer studying maps and photos, I was actually looking for my route to the summit!

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Dream of the Billowlands

I stood before the approaching storm,
I watched it swell
unfurling in knobby balloons
and I dreamed again
like I did as a child
of hiking the Billowlands,
a cumulus whimsy
a nebulous dream.

To leap from earth
into the stormy sky
to clutch and clamber
to hoist and heave
hand over hand
through a transient world
where sweet mizzle
plasters my hair
runs down my face
as I scramble, grapple
claw my way
up colossal silver mountains
weaving up and around
gray-white spires
to sweet vistas
and dizzying heightsimg_0112-large-e-mail-view

A timeless place
where toes dig
into the foamy loam of a wispy world,
and I move with easy grace
to carefully skirt the shifting ridges
the gaping crevasses
to peer in wonder
down dark steamy valleys
and bottomless swirling chasms.
A world where I stand awestruck
before the looming mouths
of stunning unstable caverns
that curl into existence
only to disappear in moments,
a land where I run in bare feet
across filmy ribbons of white meadow,
soft fertile slopes of cotton.

With strong legs
and a quiet heart
I scale
the formidable pinnacles,
the bulbous protrusions,
the slippery cliffs
surrendering to an uncertain route
and the humble buoyancy of trust.

Up and up into the high thin air
to the sunny summits
the white and misty peaks
the seat of the Gods,
the palaces of magic.
There, I bound exuberantly across
the voluptuous knolls,
the brilliant snowy crown,
the cap of the storm
and hope to meet
the wondrous child I once was
racing toward me across the gleaming rim,
to wrap her in a joyful embrace
to whisper to her in the song of the winds
my simple prayer –img_0110-large-e-mail-view

These lands were always real.
You were right to spend time here,
you were right to dream….
Never stop.

– Linda King

 

Mossy whispers:  You were right to dream…. Never stop.

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2 Responses to In a land of clouds

  1. Tammy Brown says:

    Linda,
    What a lovely poem and post. Thank you for taking me on a romp through the cloud world with you. I subscribed to your posts (thought I had before but wasn’t getting any notices.) You have a wonderful way of creating word pictures and experiences.
    Tammy

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