one summer day

At five o'clock
the sky grown dark
with thunderclouds
bristles with raw voltage;
dry gusts of wind,
pregnant with something,
lift the blanch underside
of alder leaves on the trail home
from the creek.
The swirling air
carries a cold spritz in it
playing against your delighted cheek.
Faint rifleshots boom
up the canyon
And for a moment
the misting turns to large patterings
of rain.
Some tremendous thing's
advancing on us.
Like a wheel valve opened
the darkness begins to send hail
down in enormous volleys,
pinging on every surface,
flattening the garden daisies.
Dark forms churn overhead.
Suddenly close jags of lightning
arc across the sky
followed by explosions of open thunder,
Thoreau's "giants rolling lumber
across the huge floor above us"