A Rainbow Cloud

A Rainbow Cloud

Just 9:00 a.m.

Rays hitting me at 60 degrees

It doesn’t happen often

To see a rainbow colored patch

Of cloud…clouds in the eastern sky

That too on a sunny

Fair weather morning

Yet

I watched such things

As water colored cloud fringes

Fluffy petal-like vaporous clouds

In all colors –

Pale rose

Navy blue

A bit of brinjal violet

Are they cirrus?

Is it only me?

How lucky am I to discover

Such a pure joy!

Pity! Only I can see these 

Semi-transparent colors

Many people miss them

Often we just 

Drive through life in a hurry

Barely we got time to bend

See our reflection, ponder

These waving autumn

Acer saccharum1 colors in the canal waters

Alas, we are utterly blind to

Such beautiful celestial scenes

We lack “the third eye vision”

We are stuck in the muck, 

Ever sinking deeper, welded to this earthly gravity

To the daily grind

Is that why?

Siva is always peaceful

With half-closed eyes

Though the world goes

Through all sorts of upheavals, pain

Through wicked inane wars, ruthless plundering

Yet, He is forever in deep meditation

Because the answer to violence

Is not more hurtful action

The Trident(s) must be put away

All the treachery, man made, of course

Luckily it’s countered by

Enormous beauty in nature

The eye-piercing dark blue skies

Of the northern latitudes

The Aurora colors, the breathtaking

Paintings of evening westward sky

The (sky) blue is nothing but Siva’s neck –

It is trying to keep out the

Timeless poisonous flames of 

Cosmic rays and bursts of ionic radiation

Of

The solar flares

Who can get this? Who can feel this?

What I am describing here -

Who can really?

A Tagore can understand, he was blessed 

With the inner eye

Perhaps a modern Krishna too

Certainly, Sir Raman can even 

Derive a correct explanation, an exact equation

Put it into an exact mathematical expression

But here, now

Explanation is not the point

Just looking at such clouds

Makes my day

It is a gift from our sun, 

(Adi-Narayana)

Yes - rain, moisture, cloud, water

And light – it’s all due to the sun

It keeps reminding me

There are things in the world

Beyond my imagination, my limited vocabulary

It tells me to look high up

Reach those skies, it’s beckoning me:

“Come, float in my lap

Touch these cool wispy clouds

And lose yourself in my gentle embrace”

If I ever find my 

Sweet loving angel, my Urvasi

It will be there, in those

Rainbow clouds

There I float on 

The wings of imagination

Resting on the bosoms 

Of

Soft silk-cotton vapors of

Aromatic lotuses, fragrant 

Michael Champaka, and

Freshly showered beds of

Parijatas2

And wandering between the

Hanging celestial gardens

1. Sugar Maple 2. Nyctanthes arbor-tristis Copyright 2021 by the author