Playing the Sky

Image by Felix Mittermeier-Pixabay

Hello dear Thunder Being,
Is this your voice of play?
Your leapfrog, your daredevil,
your Ha! invitation?
These are your rain games,
played beneath a hidden sun.
Pushing and jumping and shoving,
wrestling-with-the-wind games.
Less crack and crash,
more push and pound.
Expanding, explosive shockwaves –
your long ballad
drums on and on in the sky.
What throaty country song
do you keep belting out?
Oh butch voice behind the sky,
you have always thrilled me.
What do you advise,
dear nonstop song of Thunder?
What guidance are you growling?
I think you roar the warning,
Here I come ready or not!

Now you start to roll away.
I close my eyes
to open my ears,
and yes, I hear you still
rolling in the distance.
I hear your undertone,
the mumble beneath your Thunder breath.
But no, your ballad is not
done! You bang back
with your gravelly voice.
What say you, Thunder,
what say you now?
Is this the booming
finish of a litany?
I hear your changing of the very air,
your holy Amen,
like a faraway train
passing melancholy in the distance..
Now you bang goodbye
with shots of thunder in staccato wave.
Oh sinewy creature made of sound
oh Being of air, farewell.

But now my ear is tuned,
and perhaps I never shall
cease to hear your rumble.
After your percussion concert,
I can no longer tell,
Are you here, or gone?
Is the rolling in my ear or in the weather?
This after-sound,
like the faintest roar of a distant plane,
I think it is your softest voice.
Thunder I didn’t know
you could whisper!
And I never knew you could persist
in playing the sky for hours.
Will I hear you always now
in back of sunny silence?
You have a voice of mercy –
thundering, shuddering mercy.
And now your sound’s inside me.
The mercy and the might
of your rolling Thunder song
lingers, lingers in my bones.

©Susa Silvermarie 2023