In the coming darkness I stood listening to the sounds of an ending.
Clouds marched in campaign formation carried by a westerly.
Above it all, a three quarter moon looked on appearing and hiding, slightly perturbed.
Barks and croaks mingled in the distance.
A wet and soft smell of earth floated on smoke.
Threadbare echoes of a passing conversation drifted
through the oleanders and drowned in a rain puddle.
I watched the lacy edges of back lit clouds reach for each other,
miss and move east into the night.
The moon made a well in the clouds, looked down and smiled.
A little girl smiled back and waved a messy hand.
Then the moon closed the curtains and drew shapes from shadows in the sky.
There is a dragon she pointed but I said the tail was too short, probably a lizard.
Silly cartoon dogs with huge eyes grinned at a firefly.
An elf with a big nose changed into an elephant blowing snot bubbles
and made her giggle, eyes sparkling in the shadows.
Lost in the light show
we started counting the stars that ran away behind the clouds.
When she grew quiet we said Good Night Moon and went inside.
Photo from diaryofagladman.wordpress.com
unbuttoned or undone 
Gorgeous. Awesome piece of writing, Emmy.
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Thank you John. I am glad you liked it.
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Do you write professionally? For a journal or paper?
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Nope. This is it.
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UnElephant ne souffle pas les ‘snot bubbles’!
D’accord, peut-etre pour la petite.
Bien ecrit, comme toujours.
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Pour la petite, bien sur!
Tout le monde sait qu’UnElephant est tres sophistique…
Merci.
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This all sounds so familiar, Em. There was this little boy who used stare at the sky and all the images that appeared there, (sometimes he still does). This is a brilliant piece of writing, Em. It deserves to be published. Happy Tuesday, Sunshine !
Paul
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Thanks Paul. Yes, it’s nothing exceptional in a day, is it? And yet, the child makes it an adventure as my friend AnElephant says.
So my name is Sunshine? Thank you;-)
Happy Tuesday to you too.
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Elephants blowing snot bubbles would make me giggle too.
rjb
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You should have seen the cloud! 😉
You can’t make the stuff up.
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Superb poetry, breathtaking photo! I hear they say the darkest hour lasts only 60 minutes, we will have again sunny days soon and star filled nights.
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Thank you. Yes, we will.
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Lost for words. I admire.
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Thank you. I am glad you enjoyed. Smiling.
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On the day I met The Spouse we went to a remote beach, and part of discovering each other was seeing things in the clouds—we both spotted the poodle at the same time (snap!) and things progressed from there.
Anyone who sees elephants blowing snot bubbles, hears smoke and sees barks has to be my kind of person. Welcome to the club …
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Glad to be part of your tribe. Thank you for the welcome. Grinning.
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I live in NZ’s sunny (?) Southland. We have very interesting skies sometimes but for whatever reason I can never capture them with a camera—I called Spouse out once and asked her “What do you see?” and she straight away replied “Oodles of botts!” and she was absolutely right. I’ll see if I can find the one snap I kept of the dozens of failures, and post it …
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Go for it! You did see that it isn’t a photo I took, right?
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It’s a let down compared with the real thing—I now have a camera with a wider angle, but those skies only occur sometimes. Love your photo above, captured beautifully. Hold that little girl very close—and make sure she gets lots of hugs; she deserves them.
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🙂
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Oops — I didn’t read the credit-line. Damn! Either way it’s a great shot, well chosen for your words.
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Oh emmy! How delightfully lovely!
:: sigh::
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Thank you Holly. I am happy you enjoyed that.
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