Thunderstorm Poem

I was thinking about this when I was writing for my Creative Writing class.  And, somehow, I ended up writing poetry.

"Texas Thunderstorm"
There really isn’t anything
like a Texas thunderstorm.
Before anything,
the smell skips ahead,
and you know without a doubt
that your arthritic grandmother
was right
about the coming rain.


Everything
changes colors.
A little tinge of green
permeates your surroundings
and gives hue to even the deadest,
longest summer grass
you’ve ever seen.


Your daddy reminds you that a
hint of yellow colorin’
(not green like everybody thinks)
means a twister’s on the way,
so keep yer eyes peeled.
And momma tells you
about that day, when she was
driving you home from the hospital
by herself
and it came up a hurricane,
nearly sweepin’ her off the road.


It can come up from outta nowhere.
Big, angry clouds, ready for
a release.
Sometimes a two-minute warning
is all you’re going to get
before it just pours down
on top of your head
and your car
that you finally decided was time to wash
yesterday.


Sometimes it falls hard enough
to pull the petals off of
momma’s flowers.
If it really gets goin’,
the wind makes the trees dance around.
Scary,
but completely mesmerizing
at the same time.


The music swells with the
tittering and smattering of the drops
on the porch and roof,
and the big bass of the thunder
ranging from the little timpani’s
to the house-shaking, momma-scaring
booms that you can feel all the way down to your
bones.


It’s an uneven rhythm,
an unpredictable kind of song,
but rain’s beautiful however you play it,
and nobody plays it
like Texas does.