Humidity made the heat seem like steam off an iron.
The weather app didn’t predict rain until late tonight.
So I donned a sundress to drive to a birthday/anniversary dinner.
My seventy-fifth, our fifty-fourth.
But without warning, the sky bellowed.
Lit up like a chandelier.
First raindrops, round, heavy.
Falling like drips from a leaky faucet.
Then picking up speed.
Coming down in torrents.
Gushing waterfalls.
Doing battle with windshield wipers.
Winning the competition.
Making it hopeless to discern trees, shops, oncoming cars.
To step out into rushing waters.
Gushing currents.
So, we sat there, peering from the windows.
Awesome spectacle.
Hammering the roof.
Exploding all around.
Setting off turmoil inside my head.
Struggling to remain still.
Not to threaten the joy of the occasion.
Now impossible.
Sorrow, rage, lamentation.
Unleashed by the tumult.
For a sick grandchild, her family.
For corrupt politicians, their enablers.
A partisan supreme court.
Disinformation, repeated in media echo chambers.
Republican party rhetoric.
Preferring guns to safety.
Isolationism to global engagement.
Alienation to cooperation.
The heavens scream.
As do I in silent affirmation.
Mourning time’s twisting, whirling waves.
How can we bequeath this roiling world to our young?
Slipping backwards?
To before women had rights?
My mind, liberated by the chaos.
Ruminations swirling in the winds.
Wandering, then wondering.
Here we’re dry inside a car.
What about robins, bees?
Grounded like commercial jets.
Can’t go where they please.
Once the whirlwind over,
winged creatures again will fly.
Soothing agitated thoughts
in mellifluous lullaby.
Lynn Benjamin
June 15, 2024
