Out on the balcony where
I could know the power of the storm,
smell the moist, soft rain,
feel cool air on my arms
hear thunder’s deep voice
as it wandered away
I felt safe with my book
revelling in flashes of lightning
seeing dripping trees hold their breath
hearing the slush of traffic
watching the tough, bulky clouds
as they followed the thunder.
“If I accept the sunshine and warmth, then
I must also accept the thunder and lightning.”
~ Khalil Gibran
Thin morning clouds
hovered and grew
Thunder muttered
Rain spattered then
poured in sheets
Fragments of blue sky
peered through ~
gone in an instant
air fragrant with moisture
Evening clouds
ride high and spent.
“I love the smell right after a storm.”
~ Elijah Wood
Clouds thick and lowering
Thunder rolling across the city
Flicker and flash of bright lightning
Trees lashed about by unruly winds
Rain bucketed straight down,
undeterred by wind
Drains stopped by stray leaves,
My red clogs splashed to clear them
reached with a long poled squeegee
Tonight calm, damp and cool.
“I can hear your whisper and distant mutter.
I can smell your damp on the breeze and
in the sky I see the halo of your violence.
Storm I know you are coming.”
~ Robert Fanney,
(Author of science fiction and fantasy)
 |
| June 16, 2525 |
Today
Arrogant puffed up clouds
roamed the skies
sunshine glanced
through
patches of blue,
Grey undersides
reminded
of their promise.
Vestiges of yesterday’s storm
wandered
gathered
Rain splashes
abruptly,
at their whim.
Evening air
cold ~ damp
refreshing
Even now
thunder grumbles
in the distance
“There is peace even in the storm.”
~ Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
Author’s note: I did not get a photograph of today’s skies,
but located this photo from June 16, 2025.
Low, distant grumbling thunder wakened
from a troubled sleep.
Heard long before the wind
raced through the trees
flogging them with no regard
to the stately green giants.
Flashes of lightning flicker.
Rain flung at the world.
streets ran with icy water
sloshed from the heavens.
Tiny hailstones raced
ahead of raindrops.
In an hour,
exhaustion is all that’s left.
The calm after the storm
drips in the evening chill.
“Nature makes no noise. The howling storm,
the rustling leaves, the pattering rain are no disturbance,
there is an essential and unexplored harmony in them.”
~ Henry David Thoreau
(Journal, 18 November 1837)
Over the wires
Balcony cleared
~~~
Clouds gather
Yellow sky
Air smells of rain
~~~
Energy tightens
My body thrills
“Then the storm broke, and the dragons danced.”
~ George R.R. Martin, “Fire & Blood”
Lightning
A flash
that knifes
through cloud,
rain and wind
light to black
in a second
while clouds hover,
fat raindrops splash,
pooling into dark puddles.
“Only one thing that you can see and hear that is beautiful and
frightening at the same time, and that is a thunder storm.”
~ R.K. Cowles, poet
Give me a church made entirely of prairie grasses with
wheat fields of green,
flax fields of purple blue,
mustard fields of yellow.
In that church under
the broad blue sky
I can see forever.
Should a storm come upon me, I can see billowing, bubbling thunder clouds rise up over the horizon.
Should lightening fork
to the ground or
spread a sheet over
slate grey clouds
I can run in to the shelter of
my childhood verandah.
Then I can still be part of that
church that is the world of the prairies.
“She liked the enormous sky and the winds, and the land that you
couldn’t see to the end of. Everything was so free and big and splendid.”
~ Laura Ingalls Wilder,
From Little House on the Prairie
“Give me a church made entirely of ….."
~ from the poem Sea Church by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Rain threatened
And then it poured
Thunder pretended
And then clouds packed up
Then it was over….
Didn’t bother the pelicans one bit!
“If you think it’s going to rain, it will.”
~ Clint Eastwood
