Storm in Early Morning

Crack and boom of wild
wars. Spirits rise to darkened
skies. No hay today.

I sit at my desk in the early morning, facing the blank white blind which I have pulled across my window to hide the dark. No face, no beauty in that.

Words puddle on my computer screen, muddle from my fingers–fun to splash in, maybe, if you have red rubber boots, but stagnant and going nowhere.

And then.

And then, the rumble beyond my blind, starting low and slow in the distance.

Again.

And again.

Until the sound is resonant and rich and I open my blind and feel the cool of wind on skin, the sound of rain.

It is dark. Too early to be light, and the storm has held the day in custody. In the yard, the forms of trees. Water singing on the stones of our gravel road.

Thunder cracks like a thousand niagaras, cracks so loud I jump.

And suddenly my spirits are rising to meet the storm. It happens at times like this, happens that in one second I am wilted and numb and in the next I am powerful: riding a horse with pounding hooves across the mute surface of the earth, feeling the rain stream down my cheeks, shaking my head to rid my eyes of water droplets.

Words come to me now, words that have been puddling in murky pools stream up to meet the sky.

I should have a picture, I think, and take my camera outside. But the sky is lighter in actuality than it looked from inside the house, and its appearance is cloudy and dreary rather than dark and flashing. My camera can show nothing of the silver rainfall or the rumbling thunder or the spirits that ride in the air–only the wet of cement and the glistening of stones.

You cannot photograph a storm.

The rain falls now in sensible rhythm, the first free rush of storm over. The fields and the freshly mowed alfalfa will be soaked through, and Mom and Dad will have a hard-earned vacation from the haymaking. Rain is to farmers what snow is to schoolchildren.

I finish my haiku and title it “Storm in Early Morning.”

Crack and boom of wild
wars. Spirits rise to darkened
skies. No hay today.