“Stones and Clouds” by Barbara Stokes

I watch clouds and I pick up stones. Some gather seashells by the seashore, but I’m hunting for the shiny wet pebbles left behind after the waves retreat. I take my time choosing a special one. Granite; shale; quartz; the occasional fossil. Smooth grey, deep black, sparkly white, blood red with an iron heart; one split evenly into two parts one black, one white. They may not look like much when you hold them in your hand but add water and their beauty shines like the diamonds they could have become.

My collection of stones bears no resemblance to a lapidary’s with its neatly printed labels and small compartments. It is piled in ceramic dishes on window sills, side tables and dressers. I find one occasionally in a pocket. Forgotten then rediscovered when the weather has changed and I’m searching for a suitable jacket. Ah, yes. I must have been wearing this raincoat when we hiked the trail at Nethy Bridge.

I have harvested stones from the rocky beach on the Firth of Cromarty in Scotland; from Rossport on the northern Lake Superior shoreline; from the entrance to the Jack Ladder trail carving through old growth forests in Temagami. 

Inside them, held in stasis in their veins, is the history of our universe. These crumbs shed from our earth’s core, these leftovers, are billions of years old. The younger ones only 570 million years or so, give or take 20 million. I pick them up from the ground free of charge.

I’m not much of a beach person. Lying prone under the unremitting glare of heat, sun and burning sand is not my idea of time well spent. A stormy day with dramatic clouds lifts my spirits. It is unpredictable and as such, far more interesting. 

A sand beach is what is left when stones are worn down to their shattered and powdered bones. Give me the northern hemisphere’s Precambrian crusts forced up from the ocean in a hiss of volcanic steam or built through eons of geologic time and pressure. Give me cool northern freshwater lakes left behind in the glacier’s retreat and let me inhale the mineral scent of joy.

Volutus cloud

This love of the hard stuff came to me late. I bombed out early in high school geography. A year later, under the guidance of a skinny Scot, (thank you Mr. McCully), I discovered, for the first time, the magnificent design of our world. I bombed out of earth sciences again at university when my sad lack of maths and sciences eroded my friable GPA. Even after this painful fissure, my love endured.

Earth and sky; oceans and deserts; weather systems and climate zones; drumlins and eskers; cirques and rills. I mapped the world wind systems, learned about igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks, and named the different cloud formations that floated in the summer sky above us, as we lazed on the dock. 

Asperitus clouds

A part of science is naming things; the Latin name classifies and explains. Writing is naming too. How best to describe the cloud formations science has named; Cumulus, Cirrus, Stratus. Maybe you call them thunderheads, poached salmon or clouds from the Simpsons opening credits.  Cumulus is a heap. Stratus; a layer. Cirrus; a lock of horsehair. These clouds are the foundations on which all other clouds are built. 

This is poetry. Consider the new cloud names; Asperitus, Mammatus, and the latest and perhaps greatest, Volutus. These names don’t come from the Marvel universe but from our own marvellous universe. No wonder there is a Cloud Appreciation Society.

By its nature a cloud is fleeting. Like the atmosphere around us, clouds are motion, ever evolving. Like snowflakes, no two are ever the same. Clouds form and continually recycle the water from the oceans. I watch them as they change, but unlike my rocks, I can collect them only in my memories.

The stones in my collection will never change their form. Within the expanding measure of time, all the places where I found the stones will be changed. The water will rise and fall, future generations will excavate and build, sand thieves will come with shovels for the beaches. The stones will stay, stand and see it all.

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Barbara (BC) Stokes spent her formative years writing words for other people to use. She's written mounds of ad copy, talk show banter, video scripts to launch hair-growth formula and speeches for politicians and well-perked executives. Over the past few years, she began writing seriously for fun, starting small with poems composed on the GO train. 

Now she enjoys putting words into her characters' mouths and watching them extricate themselves from threatening situations. Barbara is working on a novel inspired by something that happened to someone in Saskatchewan. She lives in the garden paradise of Burlington, Ontario with her husband; a teacher and artist.

See Brian Henry’s upcoming weekly writing classes, one-day workshops, and weekend retreats here.