Dark Clouds Sunday Night

We tell ourselves that we're significant and important, but the clouds roll over us without noticing any of this.  Sometimes they send down fingers of God that destroy our homes and our fields, but they mean no offense; they're settling some argument among themselves and just don't notice the industry of the less-than ants below them.  

Dozens dead in the delta.  Homes and crops destroyed, lives ended, and the gaseous giants roll on over us without a word.  They can't see us.  They can't conceive of us.  They can sure kill us, though.  At any moment, they can send down a spinning finger of death and take everything, then return to the sky unaffected.  

Our place in the universe is a lie we tell ourselves because we need to feel important.  How many thousands of years did it take before we could even touch the clouds, and now, now that we can touch them, now that we can use our satellites to track their every move, we still can't do anything, not even a tiny bit to control them.  They give us life-providing water or not.  They send down tornados or hurricanes or lightning storms that kill us and destroy what we make or not.  Either way, we have no impact on what they do.  

We push many tons of carbon into the atmosphere so we're not inconvenienced in travel, carbon that would kill us straight away but only seems to make the clouds more active in their normal activities.  More floods, more droughts, more tornados, more hurricanes, and in return, we get bigger cars.  Doesn't seem like a very effective trade on our part.

The clouds pass over me.  Blotting out the sun.  Sending bolts of unimaginable electrical power between them, occasionally down to earth to destroy some massive tree on earth with me.  It's hardly the first time something incredibly powerful didn't acknowledge my existence.  I acknowledge theirs, though.  I paint them, I draw them, I write about them, and I make colorful lights to imitate their effect on the land.  I am in awe of their vast power and capricious nature, so much greater than anything we ants have ever created.  

I was going to be light and joyous and carefree this weekend, but my gaseous overlords chose to put on a display that soured my mood, storms then sunlight that blistered my ears but not my crown, then storms again to make me think twice about driving to town for church.  

Bottled water they need.  Everything in the past few years seems to depend on bottled water.  A few million pounds of plastic that won't bio-degrade should help things.  It doesn't matter to the clouds; they'll just roll over mountains of plastic like they roll over us.  Nothing we do impresses them.  I hear them speak now.  Words like I heard my father say in my crib before I knew what words mean.  They're not talking to me, I know.  Talking to each other, I suppose, I wonder what they're saying.  We call them non-sentient with the vain idea that only creatures like us have thought.  I doubt that's true.  All things have thought.  Thought creates reality and the reality is that I'll write about the clouds, but the clouds will never write about me.