Night Noises

Since moving here from Charlotte, I've missed nightly summer thunderstorms.  Not that I've missed the preceding humidity and unbearable atmospheric tension, but I've missed the sheer physicality and enormous presence; the shocking exhileration and release when the rain begins to pummel the earth.  Thunderstorm rain in Charlotte is violent and punishing - pummeling the earth in great, hard drops that bounce away and run off.
 
Sheets of water flood the roads and gutters, slashing floodwater that can't be accepted into the earth because of its ferocity.  Demanding, insisting, there is no request for admittance or gentle asking for acceptance.  There is only the onslaught of hard-driving rain.
 
I woke the other night to a quick flash of lightening and thunder, murmuring apologies for striding through my dreams.  I heard the rain, like a drum section - percussive and musical - cautiously tapping on the sidewalks, brushing across the foliage outside my window.  I could hear the poink of a wooden xylophone, the dat-dat-dat of thumbs tapping on a drum, the swush swush of a metal brush on a high hat.
 
I felt myself return from as if from a far distance, only sluggishly becoming aware of my limbs and trunk, heavy and motionless on the bed.  I woke slowly to the sigh of the earth as the rain fell and the exultation of the air as it released the rain.  My sleepy ears heard plants rustling, drinking in the rain and vanquishing their thirst.
 
A lovelier, more polite storm I've never heard.  What a generous and gracious gift.