There were two layers of clouds today:
One fluffy, the consistency of spun sugar,
Like the foam at the top of an ocean wave
Frozen in time and motionless.
The blue sky and a colorless light,
Intense, like the light from a halogen lamp,
Giving them a luminescence.

The second layer, below and swiftly moving
From north to south at a constant speed;
In varying shades of gray, from light to dark
Like a paint chip from Home Depot
Showing the gradations of color;
Thick, and like a sheet of icing
Hanging from the bottom of a cake,
Suspended in the air, as if
Left by a magician doing a levitation trick.

Intermittent holes in the grayness
Giving a periodic glimpse of the top layer,
Like a sorcerer teasing his audience of children
With some forbidden treat;
But the gray; thick and dense:
Tempting, making you to want to reach up and
Break off a piece from a sheet of candy.

And the morning after the storm,
Silent and eerie – a scene in a movie:
The cool wind blowing parallel to the clouds,
A tandem chill of the ominous forecast
As the gray suddenly becomes still;
The trees stop bending in the wind
And gray overtakes the sky; silent and motionless,
Intensifying the morning until the
Wind starts to move again, blue and bright light piercing the gray.