Thunderstorms

We sit under an 80% chance of thunderstorms

with skies so gray our shadows don’t show during the summer days of July. Some days, the storms break into sheets of vertical rain and roiling thunder. We stand at home and office windows talking weather talk. Some days, the sun splits the clouds allowing light and heat to dry the water drops on oak leaves and spruce needles and purple Echinacea petals. The grass seems to steam as a sauna. Our Missouri bodies adjust but our minds speak dull and our hearts sag and we sit more and more. We’ve had July summers of constant blazing sun and 102° when we had nothing to do but sit on porch swings reading poetry. Today, the rain is falling and it is 92° and it seems we have nothing to do as we sit in the unnatural, cool, dry, air conditioned air doodling with crossword puzzles and toasting to summer with chilled white wine.