Heard Thunder

I just now heard the thunder from the first lightning in the first spring storm of the year in my new home. The crack and rumble rolling through the basal brain, jolting the ears like a dog's ticking trying to twist around behind me. Low clouds are flowing overhead, and here's the rain; it's the first storm of the year. I hear that sound in my gut, and it brings back memories unbidden. Under a darkened sky outside my childhood window, so like the one I face now, lighting flashes down. I am 4 or 5 years old, tiny and quaking half under a comforter even in humid June in Minnesota heat. Gray-green light covers everything, it is after my bedtime and the light is still fading, sunset not yet coming this far north. Rumbles shake through my shoulders as the wetness crashes down, quickly, passing by and over the neighboring houses and through the town and then gone beyond to the fields creeping with early green. The sourness of aging and the sweetness of memory fill me as I watch, fascinated. Cycles and cycles of life pass by but the weather remains constant and comforting. Rumbling, rumbling, first thunderstorm of the year.