This seemed appropriate after last night’s stormy weather. My wife always said she just liked “quiet thunder.” Made me think in more ways than one of those of us who live in the Midwest.
“Quiet Thunder”
Comfortable and secure on my Iowa porch, I
enjoy distant flashes behind high, banked clouds and
strain to hear the quiet thunder of the storm.
The violence doesn’t touch us here.
From any compass quarter the storms lose against the
unmoving middle.
But sometimes here
the earth itself becomes the wind and rises howling amidst
explosions of light. Then we burrow deep.
The next days, blinking away the brightness,
returning, we
shake our heads at the disturbance and sit back on
replicated porches to listen for the quiet thunder once again.
Daniel J. Cox
5/25/90
from “Dandelions & Other Flowers”
© Daniel J. Cox 2014
Howling at the Moon 