Summer Storm
and Front Porch Swings

by Sheila Greer

I remember summers they way they were when I had the carefree spirit of a child with all the wonder and magic that lives in that focus. I can recall with clarity the instant that I would become aware of an approaching summer storm. Unafraid I would wait with breathless impatience as the wind would infuse my young body with energy. My mind’s eye sees the churning clouds and it watches as two hawks soar on the currents, and my ears hear their calls to each other. From the north comes long, jagged lightening bolts. All around me the trees toss their leafy heads in wild abandon to the music played on the wind.

Finally the rain comes. Announcing its arrival first with that wet metallic smell and then furiously stomping the ground with its centipede feet, hard and fast. Coming ever closer as the earth soaks up the wet offering like a thirsty drunkard after an all night binge. After only about twenty minutes the storm is spent. The sun chews it way through the thick blanket of clouds sending warm rays down to dress everything in sparkling diamond light. Soon wispy ribbons of mist begin to rise from the ground to curl lazily up into a clearing sky, disappearing into a deep blue ocean.

Where the grass had before the storm been brown and crackled like paper beneath my steps, it now trod soft like sponge and the wild life that had retreated from the heat into the deep woods would soon be cautiously creeping out to drink along the swollen creek, now rushing and leaping in joy over the moss covered rocks.

All this wonder I could watch from the squeaky swing that hung on the front porch of my Grandmother’s home. The sound of the rain on the tin roof would create such a symphony that no one inside the house could hear my loud singing as I imagined the rain was my orchestra and the world my stage.