Before I post the final episode of  Ants on the Blacktop I want to offer a suggestion for the current moment. If you have children, this is a suggestion for you to do with kids. If no children are handy, do it yourself. I still do it all the time.

Pick a day that’s full of clouds and blue skies. Tell your children no electronics while driving. Instead all of you can play Cloud Movies. It’s a simple game. Look at the clouds. See what they look like. Create similes and metaphors. Let a poem find you. Your task is to remember the word creations as they roll off the tongues and write them down as soon as you get home. All of the players win this game. Children learn to unplug and really look. Parent types learn to remember.

I admit I had an edge when my children were small. There were no hand held electronics that flashed and sang and pinged all the brains with stimuli. Yes, I’m the mean Bamma that says, “Look up. Turn off. The Bay Bridge is rising and we’re passing the new tower. What does it look like to you?” Looking up, two near teens discover that yes, there is a new bridge coming and wow the tower with its staging could be a rocket ship to some amazing planet.

The two small poems below are from my personal cloud movies. One is from the past and one is from a Twitter post that is very recent. Sky Scene lets me remember even now the day I wrote it on a vacation in Colorado. The Twitter post is from a walk last week. In many ways these small images capture the scene in my memory better than an actual picture.

Sky Scene

upside down

cloud bowl

blue dome

wind spills

Colorado sky

on me

Janice DeRuiter

Another Twitter Poem

shout of winter blue

white wisps

a phoenix rises

gathers force

dives to the molten sun

his feathered arrow fuses

with the sun

Janice DeRuiter

The cloud movie below became the image for a thank you card. Notice the perfect ‘T.’