It’s all a matter of perspective: how altocumulus seen above the Falls of Clyde promise
song thrushes; strati gliding across the surface of Skomer suggest shearwaters
migrating; and stratocumulus flurrying snow over Stocker’s Lake might be white herons
in flight.

These are the things I think I see when my son reads to me, a dictionary open like the
face of a planet. Pareidolia he reads, p-a-r-e-i-d-o-l-i-a. It means….

It means a teacher’s search for definition. He won’t listen she says. He answers back. He stares
out of the window, watches clouds. It means seeing synchronicities that may or may not exist in
the things that shape his curiosity: a tornado birthed close to a shopping mall; Jesus’ face
appearing upon a tortilla; the Man in the Moon; the Monkey Tree phenomenon.

Do improbability, angle and atmosphere coalesce in my son as if they are thermals
fomenting cumuli? Does his mind imagine cloud in the same way it invents language?
Iage amage feedage peckage he says scattering seed at chooks, then points to nimbostrati.
Like birds wearing police hats he says. Like Christmas trees walking; or wisps of cirrus, like a
ladybird eating cheese he says. Like a cloudmother holding her son’s hand.

I wonder what this cloudmother thinks when her cloudson says no one wants to play with
me. Does her cloudy heart dissolve too? Does she spill drizzle as she considers genetics
and remembers how, as a lonely girl, she watched while other children played?

I wonder what this cloudmother sees when her cloudson draws a map of the world and
cloudteacher glimpses the fluffy terrains of the UK, Australia, China, Russia and the
Arctic, then says I see mummy helped you with this. Does this cloudson cry torrentially too?
Does he grow, like cumulonimbus, into a storm threatening to break?

Here are other synchronicities: each cloud is an outcast child befriended by a label –
‘gifted’, ‘difficult’, ‘troubled’, ‘trouble’; each cloud exists at the edge of its emotions and
obedience; each cloud knows all there is to know about Palaeontology, Egyptology,
Astronomy and Nephology.

It’s all a matter of perspective: how school isn’t like the Falls of Clyde, Skomer, Stocker’s
Lake or places where clouds are spoken of like propellers, like woodpeckers, like whales; how
school isn’t land upon which people like my son can gather
                                             to stare at heavens illustrated by clouds
                                                      and see more than air and water
                                                                        elevated.