At Brain Pickings, Maria Popova featured 89 Clouds, collaboration of Pulitzer-winning poet Mark Strand and artist Wendy Mark. Interspersed with 89 stunningly beautiful paintings of clouds are Strand’s one-line zennish poems. Popova excerpted 16 of them.

Published in 1999, 89 Clouds is out-of-print; copies are both rare and expensive. When we found a lovely pdf book of some of Mark’s cloud images published online by Jill Newhouse gallery, we put together a hybrid of Strand’s excerpted poems and a selection of Mark’s sensational images.

We now view clouds differently as we wander through the world.

A cloud is never a mirror

Words about clouds are clouds themselves

If snow falls inside a cloud, only the cloud knows

A cloud dreams only of triangles

Clouds are thoughts without words

If a parrot is lost in a cloud, it turns into a rainbow

Clouds are drawn by invisible birds

Clouds are in love with horizons

The cloud that was gone would never come back

Every lake desires a cloud

A cloud without you is only a clod

A cloud is a cathedral without belief

A cloud is mansion without corners

A cloud lit from within is somebody’s study

Clouds cannot see what we do under the umbrella

A poet looks at a cloud the way a man looks at a shrub

Check out Brain Picking’s full post AND the gorgeous virtual book of Mark’s work at Jill Newhouse.