“Show me a man anywhere in the whole wide world who knows and loves clouds more than I! Or show me anything more beautiful. They are a plaything and a comfort to the eye, a blessing and a gift of God; they also contain wrath and the power of death. They are as delicate, soft, and gentle as the souls of newborn babes, as beautiful, rich, and prodigal as good angels, yet somber, inescapable, and merciless as the emissaries of death. They hover as silvery film, and sail past smiling and gold-edged; they hang poised, tinged yellow, red, and blue. Darkly, slowly they slink past like murderers, roaring head-over-heels like mad horsemen, drooping sadly and dreamily in the pale heights like melancholy hermits. They assume shapes of blessed isles and guardian angels, resemble threatening hands, fluttering sails, and migrating cranes. They hover between God’s heaven and the poor earth like beautiful likenesses of man’s every yearning and partake of both realms — dreams of the earth in which the sullied soul cleaves to the pure heaven above. They are the eternal symbol of all voyaging, of every quest and yearning for home. And as the clouds are suspended faintheartedly and longingly and stubbornly between heaven and earth, the souls of men are suspended faintheartedly and longingly between time and eternity.”— Hermann Hesse, in Peter Camenzind

which leads off my poem https://thetaoist.online/cloudwatchers-delights-360d9239c9e3