thunderstorm

July 6, 2024

/ HJ / Leave a comment

Three Musings on Summer Thunderstorms:

the sky darkens to post-sunset dusky grey
and a lightning bolt passes by my window
the rumble of thunder
the stream of rain
and this summer storm is at it again

[i love this weather]

~~~

thunderstorms make me smile
interrupting the daily toil
of sunrise and shine and set and night
darkening a summer morning
or lightning-flash-brightening
midnight pitch black,
sounds escaping our atmosphere —
booms and cracks and the smacks of hard raindrops
cleansing the air
feeding the ground
offering greener hues when the showers subside
and summertime just isn’t summer
without

~~~

drench me in rain
fill my ears with thunderclaps
and my eyes with bright bolts of lightning

let me taste a summer storm
and offer my nose the delightful scent
of petrichor

as the pressure changes
and my heart grows
and i know
i’m present and whole.

August 3, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

oh to be a puppy
happily chewing a faux bone
no cares in this world
but what to do if it gets lost
under a couch

oh to be a cat
content to sleep all day
and chase ghosts all night
and lay down all comfy
in whatever lap
she decides
wants her

oh to be a summer storm
rolling in to a parched land
thankful of the temperature-lowering powers
it brings with it
dropping rain
and giving an excellent light show
and changing the air pressure
for a time

oh to be anything but human
in late stage capitalism
here at this point in history–
the crossroads of
‘will we start caring
as a community
or will we let the world
burn?’

July 18, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

i can write
homage
after
ode
after
poem
to my favorite weather event
but it remains just that
‘a weather event’
but i view thunderstorms
as something so much more—

when i was 12 or so,
somewhere around the time
you still believe in magic
but are old enough to know
you shouldn’t,
i held a conversation with a thunderstorm
and i feel like it was one of the last moments
i truly suspended
my disbelief.
i went in knowing it probably wasn’t real
but i decided
that for the duration of the thunderstorm
every boom
was an answer
to a question
and i’d know in my heart
what that answer meant.
and i sat on my porch
and held conference
with the storm
for the entirety
of its travel
over us
and i’ll never forget
that thunderstorm
(and with what little i understand
about weather
it seems entirely plausible to me
that every thunderstorm
is the same thunderstorm
coming back to check on
the one child
who ever showed interest
in its
dreams
and
nightmares.)

and that
is just one reason
out of multitudes
of why
i love thunderstorms
so much.

August 21, 2021

/ HJ / Leave a comment

the calm before the storm
creates excitement for said storm.
it’s the weightless moment in circus beats,
that moment that gives you a peek into the idea
that time is a mortal construction:
that second that lasts a lifetime,
you can tell what comes next
and plan your attack,

and set up a nest inside which to watch the storm
roll by.

~

i wrote this
on June 12
originally,
and i don’t necessarily remember
that particular storm
but i remember storms as i love them:
nature’s fireworks,
conversing with the thunder,
dancing in my hometown rain
before i’d fly halfway across the world…

but this storm…
the calm
before
brings apprehension,
we’ve seen one hurricane/tropical storm
flood our [hopefully](soon-to-be) borough,
we’ve seen the devastation
global climate change
can wreak

and we hope folks stay safe
and we hope not too much damage is done
and we hope to have a nice meeting with this
Henri
but we hope to not keep him in our hearts and homes for long…