In my opinion, September is the very best time to stare at the sky.
Today was one of those warm blustery late summer days when the sky is as blue as it gets - not a cloud in sight. Each year I make a point of staring upward on such a day. I know this sounds weird, but bear with me.
I place two garden chairs facing one another, park my bottom in one, and my feet on the other. Eh voilà! Perched comfortably in this fashion, I have the perfect blue sky observatory. I stare straight into the depths of the heavens. With the warm wind whipping the trees in my peripheral vision, I behold a kind of infinite beauty.
The sky is so blue,
You can see right through
(The Sky Is So Blue; Jane Siberry)
I wonder why the sky appears to my eyes as a lively dance of moving dots of colour, not uniform at all, as my mind tells me it should be.
Momentarily I’m distracted by a hawk, way up there, tacking against the wind, then a fleeting glimpse of two warblers, flying hard. Years ago, we had huge balsam poplars, whose leaves shimmered rubber ducky yellow and green-gold at this time of the year. The warblers were always attracted.
And then it happens. Out of the blue - literally out of the blue - a cloud simply appears where no cloud was moments before – a curling, stretching splash of white moving across the sky. Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is a magical thing to behold.
My left brain, momentarily flummoxed, quickly recovers offering explanations - something to do with droplets condensing on the edge of a cooler current. Never mind that. It’s magic!
And you thought I was weird to look up at the September sky.
When cloud’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all
(Both Sides Now; Joni Mitchell)
