Sun/Cloud Partners
by Odin Roark

How matriarchal the sun,
Patriarchal the clouds,
Parenting as they do
Nature’s many needs.

Always on call,
Like a healer-team
Mixing the elixir of life,
Readying proper times,
Fulfilling duty’s myriad demands.

At times…

Humans curse this seeming abject conflict
The partnership’s chameleon essence
Forgetting Nature’s free will is just that,
A dichotomy of purpose—reality’s
Idiosyncratic singularity.

Sun and clouds,
Nomads of the natural process,
Facing each other
Often on battlefronts.

Yet…

Like any natural instinct
Sun’s raging fire,
Forever giving needed light and heat,
Knows earth’s rotation
Carrying its water worlds
Of spent frigidity
Must let rise its evaporate escape,
Obeying Nature’s request,
Feeding the ever-hungry atmosphere,
Satiating clouds’ appetite.

Thus…

Clouds attempt caution with their magic,
This ability to cool and nurture
Results of the often-blistering sun.

Earth’s open heart enfolds the saturation
Atop the soil,
Splashing skyward,
Drenching all huddled close.
Man,
Flower,
Tree,
Animal,
Especially life’s unloved weeds,
Never ignored of rain’s compassion.

Yet…

In some lands,
Clouds’ appetite becomes voracious
Rendering hurricanes,
Typhoons,
Tornadoes,
And floods,
Bringing clouds’ frequent mania contrite,
Reminding all that what seems destructive,
Might be Nature’s passionate lament for forgiveness.

Could there be…

Undefined ardor felt by sun and clouds.
This marriage without documents,
This relationship of warmth and often uncontrolled weeping,
This tireless beginning without end,
This companionship of zero judgment,
Knowing only acceptance of one another’s reality?

Despite the yin-yang
Of luminance and shade,
Sun’s heat cannot skip over
The suffocating sands of deserts,
Or aberrant dust bowls of wind ravaged drought.

Nor can the clouds
Always guarantee peaceful visits,
Given wind’s capricious persuasion,
That sometimes-friendly cousin,
Sometimes-angry uncle.

As all modes of cause and effect know,
Maintaining an existence of harmony
Is fraught with chance and timing.

But without sun and clouds,
Nature’s ever-volatile liaison of passion and duty,
The planet’s existence would merely be
The zero sum of naught,
A vacuum of nothingness.