Nature Memoir VII

    And the sky looks as if God had taken a giant comb and raked it vertically downward across the sky, creating these uneven tufts that hang like any moment they will graze the ground...

    Ever so distant you can see gray and peach-colored clouds roughly mottled against the sky. No smoothness to any of it. They are all frozen in a suspended turbulence. If you lock your gaze upon one section you may see them more, inch, crawl, like a feathery sky magma. And though they obscure the sun, its light is significant enough to break through the holes.

    The bellies of these clouds rest in a stormy color, but their faces upright towards heaven shines like snow. Seeing the contrast between the nearby clear gray and distant whites, peach, eggshell, you could swear that if you flew through it you would see heaven. The horizon is there, and it is like a great rip in the paper--this short mountain range upon which the skyline ends looks like a section of an otherwise flat horizon was ripped downward from the sky... God poorly ripping the edge of an atmospheric coupon.

    The next day, the haze breath fills the sky and below it, the scent of a barbecue, a woman walking a dog, a person unloading a car, children playing in the distance. Yet it all seems melancholy still. A contrail has widened into a cone-shaped dagger that stabs directly into the sun as a rainbow ring surrounds it like a crosshair. Somehow, the sky feels even more expansive than yesterday. Take your sunglasses off. Let it blind you.