changing cloudscape at dawn

changing cloudscape at dawn --

pink wisps above purple puffballs

above indigo shoals

How quickly the cloudscape changes, layers shifting with the wind at different altitudes. While the Sun is still below the horizon, long red rays touch the clouds, tinging them pink. Above the fields of corn stubble and grain silos, a wispy pink fringe of rain, blown by a high wind, curves down above a phalanx of purple puffballs. By the time the Sun lifts above a grove of trees, its pink and gold beams shoot out through indigo shoals. "Red in the morning, farmer (or sailor) take warning." But the promised and much-needed rain does not fall on the thirsty soil. By midday all that remains of the cloudscape is a lacy tracery of cirrus in an azure sky, mirroring the fractal branches of a shagbark hickory.