September sky

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)