In the sweltering darkness of a July evening, he sat on his back porch eating ice cream. The heat and humidity were oppressive and expected for high summer. In the heavy stillness, a massive thunderstorm was bearing down, threatening to break the swelter that lay over the region for the past week. The presence of the storm was visceral- he could sense it. Barely discernible in the starless black sky, were the towering dark clouds of the looming storm. Even the bugs were silent.
The approaching deluge reminded him of the many summer evenings he spent on the front porch of an old farmhouse in Vermont, watching thunderstorms roll in. The farmhouse had been sold the year before and he missed it. There had been nothing he could do keep it. He finished his ice cream, and reflected on the fact no doe and fawn would be walking warily out of the darkness onto his suburban lawn. A back door slammed somewhere.
Suddenly, there was a small breeze, a rustling in the trees, and the storm broke. In the flashes of lightning he could see the trees bending and twisting wildly in the gusts of rain and wind. He was getting soaked and the ice cream was finished.
He went inside to see how the Red Sox were doing on the West Coast.
Copyright 2017 Christopher Donahue