Thunderstorms

Weather advisories were flying into my inbox this afternoon, with warnings such as, "severe thunderstorm capable of producing nickel size hail," and "winds in excess of 60 mph." It's kind of exciting to watch a thunderstorm move in--the building black clouds, the whipping winds, the flashes of lightning.

Here's a poem by a Canadian writer, Archibald Lampman (1861-1899), that captures the excitement:

A THUNDERSTORM

A moment the wild swallows like a flight
Of withered gust-caught leaves, serenely high,
Toss in the windrack up the muttering sky.
The leaves hang still. Above the weird twilight,
The hurrying centres of the storm unite
And spreading with huge trunk and rolling fringe,
Each wheeled upon its own tremendous hinge,
Tower darkening on. And now from heaven's height,
With the long roar of elm-trees swept and swayed,
And pelted waters, on the vanished plain
Plunges the blast. Behind the wild white flash
That splits abroad the pealing thunder-crash,
Over bleared fields and gardens disarrayed,
Column on column comes the drenching rain.


Today would be a good day to experience both the weather and poetry. If you have kids, share one of these books with them:


Hopkins, Lee Bennett, selector. Weather. [J 811 HOP]

Noisy Poems. [J 821 NOI]

Pomerantz, Charlotte. Thunderboom!: Poems for Everybody. [J 811.54 POM]

Talking Like the Rain: A First Book of Poems. [J 821.008 TAL]


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