"Clouds are the dream weavers of the sky, spinning fantasies in sunlight," said my love before wayward journey into night, arm in arm, over fiery autumn cobblestone.

"Oh," murmur the passersby, sweeping... peering up.

"Look! there, there are angels, combing their spiderweb hair with a broom, and now the strands are caught, oh! into a spindle, and it shall become... the wool of a whole herd of sheep! across the indigo. See how they run towards the sun! to avoid a laundering...?"

The man at the doorway licks his finger, and checks the wind, "To the south, my fair friends!! To the south," he nods approvingly.

"Aha! the clouds are busy, tonight, darling, making hay before the winter, then."

"No, my love, it's you who weaves, and spins, who turns poofs of breath into infinite flaxen stores upon the wind," says I, enamored with the light, and the chill, that shows to us the splendor of your weave.

02.04.205

Rabindranath Tagore challenge @dctezcan

Beneath billowing clouds

On a sunny day in spring,

Her tiny, fluttering presence

Flooded the scope

Of the garden -

Stealing in,

Wrapping ’round and filling

My heart

Like sunshine,

Dew on flowers,

And the lightest warmth

Of a breeze.

Softly, her wings

Whispered

In the spectrum

Of afternoon’s fading light,

Penning tales of enchantment

And illustrating pages

made of dreams.

I watched,

Mesmerized and enraptured

By her fairy like approach,

A fantasy not often witnessed

While ever sure

The spin of the earth

Paused, too -

In sheer wonder -

Much like the

Beat of my heart.

As I laid in the dissonant perfume of the day,the aromatic sweetness beckoned my arid ashen pallette.

Mesmerizing and tantalizing,A treat for the diligent sixth sense.Draped above me,regal clouds,my crisis of wisdom invalid.

Wispy scient translucent eyes,alit,floating into waves of decadent pure sapience.

My questions climb high into the naked sky,vested in self wanting truth,released from cognitive clenched sentience.

I touched the clouds with my cotton candy lips

whipping the sky with my laughter.

I dreamt in color.

And that bold, beautiful world

would shimmer just so.

Just as quietly and assuredly as any world would want to,

if it had a choice I mean.

And I knew even as a child,

that we all had choices:

Some big, some small,

some seemingly mundane,

but they all made up that world

that I thought was pure beauty.

Then I woke from my cotton candy dreams,

older with eyes that looked to steady ground and not just the

l i m i t l e s s sky

and the world that seemed to shimmer before my eyes

dimmed and my lips became cracked from the strain of trying to smile

when there was no reason to after all.

That young girl who saw the world in color and shimmers,

who touched the sky with her small hands,

Lost it.

And haven’t we all been there?

Where we see the world,

see our possibilities,

and tie it to another?

Then look and believe that together, our bound forevers will make the world sing once more.

And haven’t we all become untethered from that beautiful longing?

And the person whose hand found yours has disappeared behind black skies, where the clouds mute to dim whispers and you are there still, loudly muttering your loss to no one in particular.

And the young ones out there whipping the sky with their laughter don’t know what will come when they greet the world with more than a smile. I wish to God I could shield them from that.

Especially young girls with cotton candy lips, swirling laughter and small hands- always reaching for more, in a world that used to shimmer just so.

"Clouds are the dream weavers of the sky, spinning fantasies in sunlight."

What a beautiful sentence, I thought to myself as I flipped through the pages of Rabindranath Tagor's poem, Stray Birds.

I did always wonder why clouds appear at times like the things we see around us everyday but then I remembered that as humans we are on the constant search for meaning, even to the extent of creating some when there is none. I think that's beautiful, how we envision something and then will it into existence or 'manifest' it if we want to turn to modern lingo. But at the same time, it scares me because it borders on delusion.

Some people will see the 'good' in someone who is most parts dark and full of vicious intent. They will believe determinedly and obstinately that such people will change their ways for them and become better people. But the truth is, some people cannot be saved. Not unless they want to be, anyway. It is intent that matters, in my opinion. The rest comes to you. However, when a person gives up on themselves entirely and abandons all hope, there is little that can be done to bring them back. Sometimes they are just too drained to give a damn and other times, they don't see the point in changing, perhaps because they have grown so used to it. The consequence of picking up bad habits, I guess.

What I'm trying to say is that people will see what they want to see which brings me to my final point that we are the true dream-weavers, not the clouds. We think, we imagine and we create. This is why it's so important to stay optimistic and to never lose sight of the silver lining that Tagore seems to be hinting at in his poetry.