Cloud (January)

Humid January morning again, walking down somewhere past yellowed grass. Cloud though, great mounting ranges of them the colour of agapanthus but darker, a purple-grey. Before white satin rose of the east, clouds that might become rain filter showers of light. Citywards shift clouds like creamy paint slapped thinly over blue balsa and frittering embankments that will condense and convert into downpour, when? Zenith has mother-of-pearl for miles and armrest cloud, beloved of the seventeenth century. Every quarter-hour the arrangements change, now sheepish fluffy numbers, now flat strips of vapour. Clouds crumpled linen, clouds jigsaws, clouds dark as solar panels.