Thunderheads

I stand outside

Watching

Thunderheads build

Like great, snow-covered mountains.

They make me feel hot,

Hotter,

In July

Because there is no snow.

(2012)

It is July, and the last week has been ugly. Triple digits? Every year can’t wait for summer to arrive, and then when the heat really hits, I can’t wait for autumn… I guess that’s what I get for living in the West. I don’t know how the pioneers did it, walking day after day in the stifling heat, no place to cool off, and going on water rations because they didn’t know where the next river might be. Amazing.

And the lightning! An awesome, terrible sort of beauty. I find myself praying and praying for rain in this weather, only to make the land wet enough so we don’t catch fire again should a bolt touch down somewhere. So far, we’ve been lucky. The last storm we had roll over, I had to run outside to put some things in the shed, and in the five minutes it took me to run out there and back, I was soaked. A drowned rat. I’m knocking on wood that it stays this way.