Cotton Suspended in Three Dimensions

Lately, I have been learning to see--to really notice--the beauty of the clouds. It is a wondrous thing, this beauty--at once stunning and brilliant and dark and powerful. A beauty which overwhelms and disturbs the senses. Truly awesome, it is neither simple nor purely good; instead presenting itself as both terrible and complex.
.
I have long known and seen the beauty in the African sky. The stunning blue of the dry season horizon. The stars thrown by fistfuls into the darkness. The sunsets whose rich colours are only matched by traditional wear. The lightening and rain which prove the heavens' mighty strength. These I have known, both in love and fear. But the clouds had long escaped my eye as anything more than bearers of the thunderous deluge.
.
When I first notice the clouds, they seem painted onto the blue backdrop that is the sky. Imposing splashes of brilliant white, edged sometimes with gray. Some are small, some much larger, but all appear suspended in the same plane. The sky is so big that I always see it first in two dimensions.
.
But, like the "3D Magic" pictures of my childhood, there is a stunning secret hidden in plain sight. Like the bizarrely coloured patterns and tesselations, the afternoon sky invites me to a deeper level of seeing. My eyes don't cross, and there are no dancing clowns or flying elephants, but my wonder is still inspired. As I focus my gaze on the cloudy sky, squinting to take it all in, I begin to see the whole array in the third dimension. Clouds sort themselves out, revealing the subtlest shades of white and white. Different planes appear in my field of vision and well-defined edges blur as they blend together. The horizon is too vast to capture in my glance, the clouds too white to stare at long.
.
When I notice long enough, they seem to float on a subtle current, quietly shifting, fading, melting. Moment by moment, the vision is transformed, and my eyes ache at trying to take it all in.
.
Beauty, deep beauty, moves me in the depths of my soul with its truth which is both pure and terrible. Beauty which can never be captured--by pen or brush or lens or melody.
.
And so I am learning to see the clouds in the sky.