I like this strategy, I'm gonna explore it more.

I feel no difference between your two phrases, but the editor in me is triggered to think "should've wrote 'i wandered like a cloud.'"

I can think of specific writing that really worked for me. Peter Watts for example described the passing of one spaceship "under" a blacked out space station, describing how the only thing the astronauts could see were surfaces lit up by their own ship's thruster fire, behind them, casting long shadows ahead. I liked that.