Dear World,
When I was a kid I spent summers with my grandparents in their tiny Nebraska town of Cozad. It was barely a speck on a map, and on most maps it didn’t even exist. Population under 4,000. One stop light, one grocery store, one swimming pool– and one tiny little blue home that housed so much love and so many memories from the dog days of summer. My favorite part of those summers was sitting out back with my Papa. Cozied up together on their cement patio bench, watching the afternoon storms roll in. Despite the countless Tornado Warnings we had experienced, my grandpa and I would sit out there together. Saying nothing, just taking everything in. The ominous olive clouds that would roll over the corn fields and kaleidoscope into evil twisting snakes that tried to lick up the ground. The eerie silence that would soon be drowned out by the emergency sirens. The pelts of rain that would thump our skin and make us inch closer to the house when they turned to ice. The wind whipping the corn stalks and my blonde curls like a raging monster. Papa and I, we loved it all. And when it was over, and the Heavens recovered from their tantrum, we’d smile at each other, still silent, as rainbows brushed themselves across the sky. Giving just enough of a reminder that moments as perfect as those, they never last. And then we’d go inside, turn on the Weather Channel, and live through it all over again.
*The following poem was inspired by those storms. It’s structure is called a “Sevenling,” because it consists of seven lines which illustrates an opposite.
Lightning electrifies the bruised sky
As thunder pounds on Heaven’s drum
Hail pecks the Earth, a staccato song
Cerulean hues sidle up next to sunshine
Peek-a-boos through cumulus wisps
Breezes tickle the leaves, a playful invitation
The Weather Channel will always remind me of him.
Sincerely,
Britt
