Darkness falls at 7:50 a.m. as a thunderstorm rumbles in. The yellow walnut leaves fluttering lazily down seem oddly unaffected by sudden sheets of rain.
thunderstorm
May 23, 2024
Rain easing off from a dawn storm. The peony buds look almost ready to open. A raincrow croons.
July 25, 2023
Sunrise thunderstorm: the sky darkening just when you least expect it, then the downpour and all the leaves of grass nodding like headbangers as the thunder booms.
September 28, 2021
Thunderstorm at dawn; I rush through my shower so I can watch the rain. With each lightning flash, raindrops falling from the eaves become momentary suns.
June 3, 2020
Thunderstorm just past, many leaves on the maple and black cherry trees remain upside-down, like pale, open palms turned toward the sky.
March 29, 2020
The almost Kabbalistic way a few syllables of thunder have birthed a whole lexicon of torrent. Fog takes a heavy eraser to the trees.
June 23, 2015
An early-morning storm rumbles off to the north. Flashes of scarlet: tanager at the woods’ edge, ruby-throated hummingbird at the beebalm.
March 26, 2015
Could that be thunder? The sun struggles to shine. On the flattened grass where snow sat until yesterday, a scatter of black walnut husks.
July 26, 2012
The yark, yark of ravens skimming the trees, the low cloud ceiling just above. Crushing humidity. Vegetation still drips from a dawn storm.
July 18, 2012
Distant thunder. A black ichneumon wasp walks circles on the porch floor, its wings flickering jerkily like images in a silent film.
June 5, 2012
Wind from a distant storm blows the leaves backwards. In lieu of thunder, a downy woodpecker’s fast rattle on a hollow limb.
March 28, 2012
At mid-morning, the sky grows dark. Rumbles of thunder over the noise from the interstate. A small, white petal flutters down.
September 27, 2011
Cloud-to-cloud lightning, thunder like a cloth being torn. Downpour. We’ll remember 2011 for years: “That was the autumn of the mosquitoes.”
September 1, 2011
Mid-morning storm. A fox squirrel lopes through the patch of invasive myrtle, a slow flame the rain can’t quench.