Inspired by Looking Up at Clouds

It's fascinating to me how even innocent childhood exercises of the imagination, such as cloud-gazing, carried into adulthood can become spiritual disciplines.

Just looking up as the clouds sail by can nudge us to know ourselves better as we contemplate Eternity. As Buddhism teaches: beyond the clouds (in our mind) the sun (of wisdom) is always shining.

Below, is the poem I wrote contemplating these matters, if you wish to follow along as I read it:

'To find the origin,
trace back the manifestations.'

-Tao te Ching

Clouds

Between being and non-being
barely there
these sails of water, ice, air –

Indifferent drifters, wandering
high on freedom
of the homeless

Restlessly swithering
like ghosts, slithering through substance
in puffs and wisps

Lending an enchanting or ominous air
luminous or casting shadows,
ambivalent filters of reality

Bequeathing wreaths, or
modesty veils to great natural beauties
like mountain peaks

Sometimes simply hanging there
airborne abstract art
in open air

Suspended animation
continually contorting:
great sky whales, now, horse drawn carriages

unpinpointable thought forms,
punctuating the endless sentence of the sky...

, © Yahia Lababidi, author of Learning to Pray