Ominous thunder warned us just moments before the skies opened and this gully-washer rolled in like an ambush. Nothing so torrential can last too long, so I'll enjoy it while I can. I delight in being inside and quiet with nowhere to go and nothing to do but listen and admire. The thunder rumbles deeply, resonant in my core, like an aching hunger, for food or longing. As I wander throughout my home, the varied surfaces being slapped so aggressively by the water's fall respond with equally contrastive tunes; the whole is a grand percussive symphony that is at once dark and regenerative, and I am riveted. Timpanic patters, crashing cymbals, muted brush strokes across taut canvasses. I feel rocked and lulled but also alive and excited; I'm suspended between two worlds of being, and I love it.

It proceeds in fits and starts; momentary thrills are chased away by idle periods of tranquility, leaving me uneasy in the best sort of ways. I worry about the more fragile of my plants, the food I just poured into my bird feeder, the tiny animals who must, literally, weather the storm in all its gushing strength. At the same time, I am grateful for this deluge. The ground is so parched, a dusty plain struggling to stay put much less nourish and support life. This means one day that I won't need to water somberly in the heat, hoping it's enough, feeling greedy because so many others are in drought.

Quickly, too quickly, the storm has passed, flying authoritatively to its next site. Its departure leaves me lonely in a way. As if offering crumbs, sporadic rumbles beckon to me remotely, tantalizingly audible but decidedly out of reach.

Ironically, I just cleaned the yard a few hours ago, tidying up after last night's downpour. When I wake tomorrow, the sprinkling of new arboreal detritus will flood me with memories of tonight's concert, and I won't mind cleaning anew because of the why and the when.