In my last post, I reflected on the power of poetry to draw attention to the significance of things that are sometimes overlooked. I wanted to set myself a challenge that would encourage me to apply this approach in my everyday life. Therefore, partly inspired by Elizabeth Gibson’s February nature diary, I decided to try to write a phrase or two about the sky each day for a month.
I choose the sky for this exercise because it is both constantly changing and consistently present, simultaneously wondrous and ordinary. It is far from being an uncommon source of inspiration for poets, but I don’t think the sky’s poetic potential is likely to be exhausted anytime soon.
Some Reflections on the Exercise
When I first had the idea for this post, I worried that May / June was not the best time of year for keeping a diary of skies. I’m not a very early riser, so I don’t see as many sunrises at this time of year as I do in winter. But this probably made May/June a better time to write about the sky as a way of celebrating the mundane. Most of the skies I wrote about during this month had a colour palette of blue, white, and/or grey, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t variety or interest in them.
I noticed the changeable nature of the sky more than I normally would. Often my descriptions of the sky became inaccurate within a few hours, or even minutes. Even in a single moment, there could be so much variation across the sky. What I ended up writing usually depended on which direction I was looking in and what I choose to focus on.
I don’t think you need to be an expert on something to see the beauty or significance in it.
This is not a meteorological record. I don’t know the names of cloud formations or the scientific explanations for why the sky looks the way it does. I have a vague memory of learning words like cumulonimbus at school, but the knowledge didn’t stick (although I do find the word fun to say!). However, I don’t think you need to be an expert on something to see the beauty or significance in it. And, in a way, my lack of meteorological knowledge made this a more intriguing challenge, because I was forced to rely on metaphor and imagery in order to describe the skies, rather than any technical language.
It was important for the spirit of this exercise that I wrote about how the sky looked in the moment when I was looking at it, rather than describing it from memory. This gave the diary a sense of immediacy that is quite different from my usual writing practice.
The point was to set aside a moment every day to find poetry in something ever-present and often unnoticed.
As you can see from the times recorded below, I didn’t set out to write about the sky at a particular time each day. Instead, the task spontaneously occurred to me at different times. At some point as I went about each day, I’d think, “Oh yeah, I’m meant to be noticing the sky”, which would prompt me to look up to search for something worth writing about. On a few days, I forgot until the late evening and ended up rushing to a window before bed. On other days, a glorious or inspiring sky ensured that I added to the diary early on.
This diary of skies may not be my best writing ever, but that isn’t the point. The point was to set aside a moment every day to find poetry in something ever-present and often unnoticed. I hope you enjoy reading it.
My Diary of Skies
21/05 | 11:41pm
Blotchy white clouds against a navy-blue sky, reminding me of the hide of cartoon cows. When I reach the top of the road a few minutes later, the clouds have shifted and I can’t see that pattern in them anymore.
— — —
22/05 | 7:25pm
Chalk-line clouds directly above me. Towards the horizon, they are more like a plain, a flat expanse. When I stare at it too long, I lose the sense of whether I am looking from below or above.
— — —
23/05 | 7:41am
White clouds with uneven splodges of grey, like water spilled on a sheet of paper, beginning to dry.
23/05 | 9:15pm
Pink clouds, the shade somewhere between pastel and florescent. The sun that must be lighting them already out of sight, but the sky beneath still pale blue. Other clouds hold a hint of purple.
— — —
24/05 | 3:23pm
I see shapes in the negative space, the patches between the grey: a stingray made out of sky
— — —
25/05 | 2:52pm
A collage of clouds – or a diorama. Layers of similar shapes overlapping, like echoes.
— — —
26/05 | 2:13pm
The distant buildings and trees below the horizon are faded, bleached, as if the sky’s endless whiteness is bleeding into the land.
26/05 | 7:13pm
Now the sky is full-bodied blue. The scenery below the horizon is bright and clear and no longer seems so distant.
— — —
27/05 | 4:09pm
Each hole in the clouds is surrounded by a frame of light. Around those edges, grey gives way to a shining white, where the cloud is brighter than the blue sky beneath.
— — —
28/05 | 4:25pm
My dad likes to say that this kind of sky contains “enough blue for a pair of sailor’s underpants”. I like the idea of gathering up the scraps of clear sky, sewing them together into some strange patchwork garment.
— — —
29/05 | 5:41pm
Clouds heavy with rain, all that dark grey potential hovering above. Something ready to fall, something ready to break – but not just yet.
— — —
30/05 | 6:59pm
Cobweb wisps of grey over a grey backwash. Some of them swirl like a greyscale Starry Night.
— — —
31/05 | 9:06pm
Clouds lit from below in rose-gold, like in a painting with cherubs. They glow so brightly that I could almost convince myself it’s their own light.
— — —
01/06 | 8:48pm
A spectrum of pastels move up from the horizon. Pale peach, moving into cream, then blue, which deepens the further-up the sky you go.
— — —
02/06 | 9:04pm
The sky is baby blue. The clouds are cornflower islands – I searched Google image for ‘shades of blue’ to work out what to call them.
— — —
03/06 | 4:30pm
Woolly tufts scattered across the sky, as if after sheep-shearing.
— — —
04/06 | 8:14pm Even in a sky as dull as this, there is movement, a subtle drifting. Sections of the grey expanse float downstream.
— — —
05/06 | 10:07pm
The sky is a colour I can’t think of the name for- a dull mix of purple, grey and blue. I wouldn’t have known there were clouds if not for the soft rain on my face.
— — —
06/06 | 6:26pm
Like a sheet of white paper after someone has scribbled on it and then tried to erase all their pencil marks. The ghost of the grey lead is still there in subtle smudges.
— — —
07/06 | 6:54pm
A crack in the clouds, a canyon with jagged edges.
— — —
08/06 | 8:13pm
An unexpected rainbow. There’s not even any rain here, and yet there it is, arching its way up into the sky. A cliche of wonder. Its glorious spectrum, the way the colours blur each other. Its translucent certainty. It fades before it reaches its crest but it is enough.
— — —
09/06 | 4:00pm The clouds could be mistaken for a second horizon – one more dramatic but even less tangible. Silhouettes rise up like mountains.
— — —
10/06 | 5:00pm
Two small wisps of cloud separating off from the larger mass and drifting away, making a bid for independence.
— — —
11/06 | 10:58pm
The last brightness lingers in the West. Elsewhere the sky is becoming navy blue, having begun its journey towards black.
— — —
12/06 | 10:47pm
A thin layer of clouds drifts across the evening’s first star, but it shines through.
— — —
13/06 | 11:21pm There’s still enough light to see the clouds mottled with patches of grey-blue sky and to imagine the shape of a bird cut out from clouds.
— — —
14/06 | 8:00pm There are clouds so thin that they seem to change the sky’s texture with hardly any effect on its colour — simply an area of bumpy roughness interrupting the smooth.
14/06 | 1:37pm
It’s called a strawberry moon, but to me it looks golden, like a shining coin, like a sun in a dark sky. It reminds me of a moon in a picture book – it feels as if it ought to have a smiling face.
— — —
15/06 | 7:37pm
There’s an arrow cut out of the clouds, pointing across the sky like a paper aeroplane in flight. The sky could be a diagram full of symbols I don’t understand.
— — —
16/06 | 6:00pm An aeroplane creeps its way across the sky, dragging a white snail trail behind it. The trail is the same colour as the nearby clouds, and similarly intangible, but it’s too orderly and purposeful to be mistaken for them.
— — —
17/06 | 8:31pm
Dustings of white cloud across the blue sky, like flour on a kitchen surface.
— — —
18/06 | 9:37pm
All day the sky has been consistent grey, such a contrast to yesterday’s bright sunshine. I couldn’t think of much to say about it, but this evening there are pale peach stripes glowing across the clouds, running at a slight diagonal to the horizon.
— — —
19/06 | 5:07pm
These are good clouds for seeing shapes in: a rabbit, a jug, a twisted ribbon, a submarine. This sky is a Rorschach test.
— — —
20/06 | 3:07pm
There are ghosts flying across the bright blue – ethereal forms sweeping over the sky in ribbons and cloaks of translucent white silk, the direction of movement clear from the flowing lines, even while they seem frozen.
— — —
21/06 | 11:38pm
In the light pollution twilight, I can see a few faint stars – like specks of glitter left behind even after hoovering. A moving dot masquerades as a star, but flashes white then red then white.
It’s been a month, but there’s no neat conclusion to this. There’s no continuous thread. There’s just one sky after another, and always more skies to come.
Your Turn
If anyone else wants to give this kind of exercise a go, I’d be very interested to hear how you get on! You could tweet at me @BethRSD or send an email to bethd154@gmail.com .
As I reflected above, the sky works particularly well for a daily record, because it is a constant in our lives yet always in flux. But, if you don’t fancy describing the sky, you could try describing the state of some other changeable thing on different days. If you live near a river or the sea, you could record something about that body of water each day. If you walk the same route or take the same commute on a regular basis, you could make an effort to write down and notice a detail of that each day.
What I valued most about this exercise was the regular injunction to notice, record, and attempt to see poetry in what I would otherwise have taken for granted; this approach can be applied to all areas of our lives.
Submit your Small Good Thing
For an upcoming post, Beth wants to know your ‘Small Good Thing’ – something small, simple and overlooked that you want to show appreciation for. Submit in just 10 seconds over on this Google form!
