Duet for Thunderstorm and Piano

We’re looking for storms tonight. We’d like thunderstorms, but we’ll be satisfied with plain rain. A rousing thunderstorm would be beautiful; bring on the storm with stabbing, dashing forks of crooked lightning; give us thunder rumbles that would shake the fortitude of even the mightiest of men. Let the rain come down in that spacious smell of petrichor and ozone in the evening. Give us a breeze blowing through the bedroom window as we sleep, white noise dreaming of thunder beyond the curtains.

That’s me – and I don’t even look like me when I’m sleeping. Ignore the doorbell. Ignore the phone. Let me sleep. Let me dream. Let me listen to the night. I love this song: Duet for Thunderstorm and Piano.

We’re looking for storms tonight, for magnificent weather, wishing for winds to blow through the building, and through the budding trees, for rain falling from a low ceilinged sky. We’re watching for lightning strikes. We’re watching for repeated lightning strikes. We’re waiting for the flash and boom of mellifluous thunder so loud that it cracks the sky in half. I shouldn’t have said anything. I shouldn’t have said anything because it’s time for me to go to sleep.

The boy child of memory sits at the screen door during the thunderstorm with a coloring book and a stuffed rabbit. The rain is his favorite friend. The telephone rings and everything begins again. Waiting for you in the morning with an eye for the falling. Potted plants and ringing phones go on forever. Have we arrived? Are we lost? Let me watch and smell and feel the rain and I am content.