Clouds
Backdropped in a translucent blue, the hint of an impending rain makes itself known by slowly covering the sky with mare's tails. Once aware, I peek all afternoon for the bulbous billowing clouds that will surely follow, and as the day closes, they tower above.
All night they have been driven off the ocean to build with water sent north from southern plains soaking up the heat and then in my morning with no more prairie grassland to flash over or slow their progress, they slam into the boreal forest.
All that energy of heat, water and light will be dispensed. Here, now, filled with moisture not to be contained, so tired of carrying the load, they unload, in a torrential downpour. It's not a dust settler, this aint no summer sun shower, it aint drizzle, no way it's gonna sprinkle.
The sound of a billion pieces of water roars down in my yard. No safe quarter in any direction can be had, save under my deck. In seconds the air temp drops. Distant rumblings from above as this giant upset stomach of smashed and weary clouds lashes out with a deadly violence.
A lightning strike hits so close to my home, the home I usually find to be so safe, is itself literally shaken to the foundations. It unnerves me as well. The great tree is split, slaughtered, splintered, branched, halved from the top, to mid tree is rent like a soft piece of cloth. A flash of light so brilliant I had to close my eyes.
From above, the ear piercing cracks move ever so slowly away, grumbling sounds that race through a murderous sky still keep me wondering. I cower below, hoping. The anger in the sky finally grows distant to the east. Now it's simmering to a soaking rain, as the morning wears on, I feel abit worn out from it all, and the rain must have had its fill too.
By noon the all the dark clouds have vanished, a first snippet of sun pokes through here and there, great gaps of blue reappear, by three pm, the pounded matted grass is sundrenched dry now rising to be a green blade and I mow the lawn.
As the evening now draws down on me softly, just like the previous night, the sky of cotton candy colored fluff, from one edge of the horizon in the west to the other, hints of a pink sky at night, a fisherman's delight. The trout whisperer
