Gray Skies

There are times that gray skies make me feel sad and depressed. Not as in a clinical depression, but more like I feel down. It is more so since my wife, Cindy, has passed. Many times I really don’t notice the skies, either I am inside writing, taking a nap, or my daughter is home and that keeps me busy. But when the gray skies have sleet or snow, or rain, I do notice because they tap on the windows to get my attention.

The intensity and hues vary with the type of weather. It can range from a silver-white with a misty rain to a dark gray from ice and snow laden winter clouds. They can appear as almost a midnight blue of a spring thunderstorm to a sickly gray-green of possible tornado weather.

Some days it’s smooth and one solid color as though it had been spray painted or rolled on. There are days when it looks like swirls of cotton candy. Broken clouds look as though they were spread through the sky with a palette knife, thick, patchy, and broken.

Gray clouds may by wispy, like a veil of tightly woven spider webbing, barely concealing the sun. The very solid and dark clouds seem almost oppressive, hanging low and swallowing up Old Sol.

One scene that I always love is a stand of trees that can be seen from my front porch. In the spring and summer the green of the leaves hide the nakedness of their branches and trunks. In the autumn, the colors blaze against the background sky, but my favorite happens infrequently. It is when the leaves have all fallen and before the snow decides to blanket them. The clouds are a deep gray-blue and as the sun sets, it lights up the front of those trees. Their nearly white trunks almost glow, framed by the cobalt of the sky behind. It is a glorious thing to behold. I watch until the bark darkens and the sun disappears.

Gray clouds can bring me down if I allow it or they can be a thing of great beauty, It is my interpretation of what I see and how I internalize it.