A Bang from the Inky
POETRY: Thunder breaks. Nature transforms. Life persists.
Clouds of purple, black and gold.
Born: a thunderous mortar-storm.
Bounding, bound in the waveform
of a kettle-drum hit with a brick.
Unchoreographed slap-flapping,
crows peck the seeds
among the wind-rain-loaded reeds,
where bathe the showering millipedes.
THERE IS A TEMPTATION to keep going, verse on verse, but this poem is short and inspired by a moment: the only time I’ve been directly under a thunderclap. There was no building-roll of thunder, and before the crack happened, everything was quite silent. I’d say it came out of the blue, but of course it came out of the ominous stack of black and purple clouds, touched by a little late-day sunlight. Such a memorable sound, an immensely loud, round, resonant report that dipped down and bounced up, B’DoiiINNNG! Unforgettable.
(The title here, A Bang from the Inky, is an echo of the fantastic Attila The Stockbroker’s A Bang and a Wimpy. See him live if you can, he’s mad-good.)
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Illustration from a photo by Marek Piwnicki on Pexels.