late spring –
nickel-sized hail
batters steel door
Tag: storm
Pen to Paper: The Isolating Storm
You’ve seen this exchange in movies and TV shows and plays and you’ve read it in books and short stories:
“Oh! Cuthbert!” Margareta exclaimed. “We need help! Quickly! Telephone the authorities!”
“Please, my dear; despite the dreadful circumstances, you must try to calm yourself. Calling the police is exactly what I was about to do.” Cuthbert picked up the handset and listened for the dial tone, but only silence greeted his eagerly waiting ear. He flicked the hook several times in rapid succession but failed utterly to establish a connection. He slowly, deliberately replaced the handset on its cradle. “The storm has knocked out the lines,” he reported grimly. “We’re completely cut off from the outside world.”
The lightning flashed and the thunder crashed as if to underscore Cuthbert’s announcement.
haiku 165
storm clouds pass –
universe returns
to night skies
haiku 128
long after
the storm…
mammatus
haiku 119
rainstorm leaks inside —
stairwell becomes
waterfall
Fiction: Blinding Light
The storm had taken out a power substation and Max and more than 1,500 others were without electricity. The summer afternoon darkened quickly and the storm was upon Max’s home.
Having nothing else to do, Max sat and watched the storm through the bay window. He saw the lightning briefly illuminate the cloud-dimmed windows in long and short bursts.
“It looks like an old signal lamp,” he said to his old dog, Freda. “Just like I used back in the Navy. I wonder what this storm is trying to tell me.”
haiku 117
midnight storm —
cat uses shoe
as a pillow
haiku 110
gray storm clouds
briefly
occlude Venus
haiku 77
I knock down
a small wasp nest –
the storm hits
haiku 73
highway –
my car meets
the storm’s rain shaft