Waiting for the Storm

The sky is a strange shade of grey this morning,
not quite a threat, but full of the promise of threats,
dark and shifting, like a dark dream.

The air is pregnant with rain.
You cannot feel it. Instead, you sense it,
smell it, a distant thing, ripe and heavy.

The limbs above your house wave and shiver.
The grass dances. The wildlife, usually so plentiful,
have gone to barrow.

In the distance, there is thunder, low and rumbly,
far enough there is no lightening yet,
near enough the porch floor shakes.

You have survived many such storms.
There is less fear in you than there once was.
You have seen death, twice. A mere storm holds far less fear.

You have survived many such storms
and there is freedom in survival.
You sit on the porch and wait,

free finally to experience the wonder of it all,
to be the fool you were made to be,
sure, always, of the other side.

About this poem

I have come to the place in life where I worry less.

They are predicting storms all day. No matter the weather, they are right.

Tom