Colour and Light
How can something be so invisible, but still so full of colour? Full of possibility, latent and disguised. Casting the grass bright green; dazzling gold off the windows; glistening sapphire off the magpie’s jewels. Every second, 382 trillion joules of stellar energy exploding from the sun in every direction, in every colour, but for a few wavelengths stolen by elements in its atmosphere. What a waste, only a dot of that light reaching the earth. Only a fraction landing on this page, black and white.
Immersion
Fathom-deep
Ocean-wide
An unsurvivable depth
But for its lightness
Graceful and dancing
Into ladders, from lungs and leaves
Spiralling to the heavens
Where it fades
Drifting
Recaptured in long arcs
By gravity
Descending
To the bulk
To the body
Lending weight
To the pressure
So clement, so breathable
For us, and shared
With everything pulsing
A gift from the green
Mile after abundant mile
Distance
Dear Earth,
It’s such a long way down from where I left you, since the ice crystals in my body lifted up from your lakes, rivers and seas. It’s been a journey to get here, suspended at the edge of the atmosphere, seventy kilometres above home. It might have been a decade since I left, and here I am now, the highest cloud of them all, luminescent in the twilight.
I’m happy to be here. So little pressure, so little movement, just drifting on the gentlest of currents and watching the world roll round in slow motion.
Where we go next, though, I’m unsure.
Yours fondly,
Noctilucent cloud
Part of a written submission for Granta’s Writing Nature workshop, 2025.