The Thunderstorm

Today is too hot, too humid, too strange, too oppressive. Only the tropical can savor this wet hot air and be happy. Even the children are languid.

The subtle breeze that brought this summer is gone. Misty fields of spring are now overgrown with summer, its lushness of spreading crops, weeds, and strange dusty green things a weird and colorful enigma. The cold winter wind is a bitter broken memory and the scent of autumn can’t wedge its way into the savage heart of this heat.

Clouds majestic mingle and meld in the sacrosanct blue that no one can touch. A rainbow is hidden and brief and crouching in its arch somewhere in the quivering shreds of a thunderstorm close but not nearby. The oppressive heat for which I once pined is staggering and the day is oddly calm and still. When I close my eyes I can picture the windmills of some Kansas farm gray and peeling stark against an intensely troubled sky. The “Wizard of Oz” comes to mind: Dorothy and Toto scampering down a broken dirt road racing home to see what was the matter with Auntie Em– only to find themselves too close to the bowels of a hungry and desperate tornado.

The sweat drips and the sky bubbles and cooks the clouds – boiling them into a stew of trouble. The sky is roiling: an undulating, foreboding pot steaming and bubbling over with the potent and powerful and the miserable fearful and weak. The teardrop blue, once succulent and sweet is devoured by the cindery-gray and black billowing miasma that spews forth from the roil.

I watch in wonder.

A cracking flash erupts slashing upward so quickly that it breaks the air and forces it to explode – the thunder rolls and echoes. And echoes. A crazed and cold inferno descends wildly toward the simmering earth and pushes thin columns of hot troubled air upward fueling the dark rebellion. Anarchy reigns across the heavens and is tossed turbulent in the black foam that is all that remains of the sky.

Winds wild and willful whip the dust on the ground into devilish spirals of danger and the lightning cracks against the deep and mournful gray of the sky. Then comes the rain. Rain in torrents washes the heat and humidity from the air with its fearsome pounding. The riveting of hailstones pounding on the porch force me to seek a safer place. The seething angry wind rattles the windows and the livid rain seems to come from all around – above and below and behind, borne and fed by the fury that is the raging storm.

A bit of light rips through the dim, ragged coattails of the storm; the teardrop blue, like the sweet scent of passion, tears away at the retreating mass of dense lifeless gray and ruins its perfect terror.

A raincrow perched on a wire above the street coos and the air is cool and pleasant. The whimpering monster melts into the growing glowing sky full of sensual blues and oranges and reds. A tranquil sunset. Children play in rushing rivulets running ragged along the edges of streets smooth and glistening in the afterglow.

The scent of honeysuckle hovers and the mourning dove’s coos mingle with the sound of children splashing and laughing. The sanctity of serenity restored. The swirls of summer sublime.

The hot and steamy day transformed into a cool and dreamy summer night by a band of anarchical marauders flying on powerful but ephemeral wings.

The storm has passed. Dreams dance on such soft and cool summer nights.