Till the Rain Comes

Sitting here on my screened deck, in almost total darkness and stillness. The air is tense, and thunder rolls in the distance. A summer storm is rolling in from the west, a temporary hiatus from the heat, though that won't last and tomorrow will be both hot and humid. But for now it's interesting, the stillness, only a distant bark of dog, the faint drone of crickets, no breeze.

Now a slight breeze picks up, again from the west, and I can sense a faint smell of rain. A tiny moth has somehow slipped into the porch, and bats against the computer screen until I assert my dominance and smash it. How dare it interfere with my late night reveries.

One of the better parts of growing up in the American midwest is the turbulence of summer storms. Growing up on the Great Plains, I often watched them build up from a distance and to feel and see the power of nature. I recall one childhood summer afternoon looking out the kitchen window of a friend's house and a long low line of darkness rolled toward us, growing higher and covering the sky, and hitting with a wall of rain. Not frightening, simply fascinating. We also had what we called late night "Tornado Parties," when the town's siren would go off and the people who lived in the houses across the street, without basements, would come across to the safety of our basement. No tornado ever struck, though more than one morning after we would see the downed trees and hear about the storm that just missed us.

I don't anticipate any of that tonight, just some heavy rain and mild winds, perhaps a touch of hail. Up here in the northern middle America the weather is milder, not as given to storms that roll and roll and build up force as they come from the far western mountains. Here the winds are given to more directions, and the storms are generally milder. Though not always, there have been a few damaging tornadoes since we moved up here. Emphasize "few." Better than earthquakes or hurricanes.

But the stillness has returned. Though the sky is still solid black, no stars or moon, the breeze has died away, and the thunder and pale lightning flashes have stopped, at least for now. The writer in me is disappointed, the story arc I anticipated has not arrived. I expect it will in an hour or few, but it's growing late and I'm growing tired and another of those moths has appeared.

I guess I'll just pack it in for the night. Sorry to have wasted your time here. Maybe next time. When the rain comes. A better man than I would probably just delete this, but I hate to throw away these words; I much prefer that you know that I, like Kilroy, was here.

Why else does one write?