CLOUDS LIKE WHITE MOUNTAINS ❋ Chris Riddell

How they rose into the sky
mounds of pure cotton
wading above the Caribbean Sea
with the sapphire Costa Rican sky
a backdrop of heaven’s face.

I sat on the sandy beach
enamoured by their
robust volume edged by silver
forming ranges like
fortresses without gravity.

Everywhere I went
in that verdant land
those clouds hung above
with rain like boulders
rolling in torrents to
unload the jewels
held within soft depths.

Their somnolent grace
slow moving in forms
immeasurable, such
celestial inspiration
ushers through them
in broad shafts of sun
like sword thrusts from
their cavernous cores.

Those mountains are still
impossibly defined
in the eye of memory.
No rock and stone, but
vapour and mist on
tropic winds blown.