Dark the day begins
Light where it should have been
Shadowed densely cloud covered
Silent buzzing stillness
Cascading curtained grey sky
Dense the air
Heavy humidity
Wishing for a chill
Forehead beads of sweat forming
Nothing moves but for the whirl of a swirling fan
Pushing hard sticky air
Not going far this dense hour
The green of trees lost their shimmer
Static they stand
Waiting waiting waiting
No birds sing
Silent
The song of them usually distracting
The singing multitude soundless
Not a single chirp, peep, or tweet
Their songlessness adds to the weight
Their cascading communion song gone
What is coming
The outside standing so still
But for the red t-shirted man pacing
His boundary chainlink fenced
I see him multiple times a day
He comes outside to smoke
Pleasuresless addiction
It seems
From behind my window
Older than smokers should risk
He is
I worry
Not knowing him
Finally a sound
A rumbling far off in the distance
Streaming thunder
Roaring at the morning
Long-winded its bark
Ricocheting from cloud to cloud
Its sonic clap reverberating
As the sky gets darker and darker
Feels like night falling
Backward this day
The sun blocked out
Morning delayed
Drip Drip Drip
Small stingy droplets
Dapple upturned leafs
Thirsty droughted Summer days
Browned lawns
Too late for them
Nothing left to rehydrate
Their hay-colored remains
It’s like the rain is thirty
Itself stalls
Refusing to give itself up
To fall
It’s like that - absorption
Turning from one thing to another
From a cloud to a drop to life source
Grow
Then waist
First flash of light
There is the clap
Volume upturned
The storm nears
Lightning striking
Punctuating the silence
light
Relief from darkness
The rain more generously descending
Drops small doubtful
Not like Florida
Drops the size of small limes
Waterfalling the skies
Over lush plush plus drops
Here midwesterned
Rolling off the clouds
Thunder continuous
In waves, the sound crashing
Reverberating light
Electric current
Strobing particles
Teasing wash of light
Flash flash flash fast
Taste the green
Fragrant road
The asphalted sent of first rain
A warning bird chirps
nervous alarm sounding
A white car passes
Raindrops spinning off the tires
Pinwheeled water dirtied
Asphalt mixture
Black tar resistant against water
The road glistening
Reflective
Mirroring the sky above
Road now sky
The up and down
Confused by their relocation
One being limitless
Spatially
The other fixed
Locationally
Like trying to pour a trillion universes into a thimble
There he is again joylessly smoking in the rain
Back to building eaves his shelter
Sucking in the flame
Holding Holding Holding
Releasing the smoke
The floor beneath me vibrating
The boom so thick
More thunder in this storm than rain
The sky now dull more than dark
Birds chirping their relief
Hesitant uncertain
Reluctant to sing a full-throated song
Silenced again by the perilous sky
Steady stream from pitched roof flows
Faucet creased stream
Cascading to bricked patio
The slap of water against stone
Granulating solid
To sand
Erosion small scale
Say that to the brick deteriorating
Disappearing one granule at a time
Everything is doing it we just can't see it in the moment
Then one day you wake up
Older
Old a few more storms away
A least that is what we self say
To keep old at bay
This weather system passing
The air shifting
Sitting Sitting Sitting
Having nowhere to go
Time measurelessly passing
Out of time
Not as in ran out of time
But free from time
The illusion
The force
The expectation
The race
The rat race
Life by design
Not choice
Working class
Labor Force
Forced labor
Stalled for a beat
Sabbatical from the grind
Temporary rest
Get back to work
Who’s in my head
Who cantors this curious call
But wait this is my work
Collarless - unpaid hours
I’m a storm watcher
A professional observer
Valueless un-collared
Oh back to labor
The work of making someone else filthy rich
The voice in my head corrects
Paid Labor will come again
I’ll put on a collar
Necessity of the necessary
You know food and shelter
The basics
As for now
Doing what I do best
Witnessing
With spectacles
The spectacle of a weather condition
Temporary
From begging to end
Like everything
Everyone
Everywhere
A storm passing