Fast-Moving Clouds

I watch the sky's appearance change from moment to moment. It's late January, southeastern United States, the kind of windy day that keeps gathering clouds in continuous motion. It's not one of those times when you can study clouds long enough to imagine they look like something that matches something else, where one billowy cumulus looks like a reclining woman, propped on an elbow, and another looks like a unicorn.

These clouds are dark and thick, with a lot of water in them. They almost cover the sun, yet the sun is insistent, illuminating a spot behind the flow of vapor in the stream of clouds.

So the sky isn't all black. The sun penetrates, and colors different shades where the cloud thicker or thinner, adding texture along with changing hues and brightness.

A small patch of blue shines briefly in the photo above, allowing the light to offer a barely visible but discernible rainbow in the top of the image.

In the picture above, even more than the others, the clouds appear as a tunnel. All clouds like these, dense, and near-bursting with the rain they're about to release, have moments of vivid three-dimensionality.

You can imagine a journey through the nebulous passage leading to a brilliant light at the other end, where the cold sky shines blue in thinning air.