The sky is dark above my head
But dry as dusty roads
The night is lighting with a crack
Electric booms forebode
There is no silence to be heard
The roaring sky goes on
Illuminating gloomy night
The rain will come anon
It flickers like a dying flame
Where gusts go lightly by
To breathe a pulse for moments brief
Before the embers die
Like massive cameras in the sky
Are testing out the light
To try and fight against the dim
And black and dark of night
Their shutters rumble through the air
But blurry they must be
For once again the flash goes on
Oh what a sight to see
And now the water starts to fall
The gentle drops collide
With pavement, grass, and coping stones
In rivers now it glides
And up above the sky’s still lit
And lightning still portends
A storm to worsen ‘fore it’s done
When rainfall then will end
As sirens wail the wind picks up
The thunder does not cease
But fighting to be audible
The downpour does not cease
The latest booms grow louder yet
The sky grows brighter still
The night is day for seconds straight
As rivers flow downhill
And when precipitation fails
The brunt of storm has past
But distant sounds of thunder stay
And in the air will last
I wrote this in sections as an actual thunderstorm went overhead, with incredible amounts of lightning in the clouds, and then the thunder, and then the rain, and now all I hear is the thunder. And yes, there were sirens in the distance, which combined with the thunderclaps directly overhead, did spook me a little.
Originally, I was going to just send it after I wrote the fifth stanza, but I waited so long that it started raining, so I decided that it only made sense to add a few more lines.
I also re-read this before sending it out, which I don’t normally do because I’m falling asleep at that point, and goodness me, I really hope that there aren’t as many typos in what I normally send out as there were in the unedited draft of this one!