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