fiery cloud dragon

fiery cloud dragon

chasing the setting sun

into the maw of earth

Amazing sunset cloud dioramas during these late autumn days. One looks like a dragon with wings of fire chasing the golden orb. Another looks like a river of vermilion fire, while yet another looks like little wavelets on the ocean. Nature-made and man-made clouds combine to create an effect like the streaks and squiggles in stained glass. And in another scene, one layer of inky clouds is raining wispy virgas, while the layer below it is sending streaks of rain upwards. How strange is that?

sunset epiphany

sunset epiphany --

gold gilds the cloud canopy,

sets bare trees ablaze 

Like the Zoroastrian magi on the Day of Epiphany, I have journeyed to this deserted hill from the east, following the descent of the Sunstar to Earth. A chilly wind blows across the barren hill, shorn of corn, stubbled with broken stalks. A canopy of ash-gray clouds arcs overhead, like a giant wing edged with feathery streamers of rain. The wind is pushing the bottom ends of the virga so that they fall at an angle, like a row of commas. The western tip of the wing cloud appears to originate at the point of the setting sun, while the opposite tip hovers above a line of bare trees on the eastern horizon. The golden sun gilds the edge of the western clouds and sends shafts of light across the hill, turning the eastern edge pink and lighting up the tops of the trees with a red-gold glow. I stand in the middle, awestruck by the appearance of the sky, an epiphany of overhanging darkness with light manifesting at both ends.

blue clouds penetrate

blue clouds penetrate

pink sky with fragile virgas –

embracing bare tree

A band of blue clouds spans the horizon, trailing fragile virgas that penetrate the pink ribbon of sunset sky, but the rain fails to reach the ground. Between the darkening clouds and the lingering light, a solitary bare tree spreads its limbs, embracing them both.