THE CLOUD

Friends, skies, and gentle breezes: we are gathered here in quiet memory of the Cloud.

Once it drifted above our fields and cities, a soft white continent suspended between earth and heaven. It was born of evaporation, the quiet rising of water from lake and leaf, and it lived by the grace of temperature and wind. Children pointed upward. Pilots charted careful courses around its silver heart. Poets wrote of its changing shapes.

The Cloud gave us shade on summer afternoons and the promise of rain when fields grew dry. Its edges caught the gold of sunrise and the rose of evening. Inside its gray chambers lightning was forged; from its underside fell the silver threads that renewed the world. It asked nothing in return except that we look up.

Now the Cloud has passed beyond the horizon of memory. The air that once held its form has grown thin and clear. No longer do its shadows move slowly across the land. The horizon stands sharp and empty. We speak of it in the past tense, as one speaks of a beloved elder whose chair remains empty at the table.

Let us remember its many names: cumulus, stratus, cirrus, nimbus. Let us recall the way it once gathered on the shoulders of mountains and the way it dissolved at noon. Let the silence that follows its departure be filled with gratitude for every drop of rain it once delivered and every moment of wonder it once granted.

Rest now, gentle Cloud. The sky will remember you.