Though I’m sitting at a desk staring at a screen, in my mind’s eye I’m surveying clouds. I’m lying on a deck chair, as I did on Saturday. My hands are laced behind my head, and I’m marveling at the puffy cumulus clouds that float across an impossibly blue sky.

Maybe I was just short on imagination that day, but I spied no particular shapes. No castles, dogs or sinister faces. I saw just the clouds themselves, and that was enough. I looked at them for what felt like hours but was only minutes. Still, it was long enough to get lost in their alabaster swirls, their tufted promises; to swim recklessly from one to the other across the fathomless blue.

The clouds were both companionable and regal. Looking at them long enough I wondered what it would be like to be a part of them. It would mean I’d be drenched, of course, but if by some miracle I could remain dry, and I could fly without fear to the outermost thin trails of cirrus, what would the green world look like underneath? How verdant? How insignificant? How much like home?

Photo: Weather report.com