Summer

Long after an orange sun has bowed beneath distant mountain ridges, this bedrock is still warm from earlier rays. Lightning silently rages on a town far from where I lie on this rolling hill. Towering trees encompass my field, they pulse and flicker with scores of fireflies creating an erie yet peaceful perimeter. A breeze wavers cooly on my skin and a lingering heat from ancient granite creates an impression of safety in the face of this impending tempest. Looking up, I watch the last of the summer constellations vanish behind unstoppable clouds. Towering thunderheads flash with power and brevity, like ignited magnesium dust, then fade again to darkness. A faint rumble rolls across my dark hill and the storm nears. I close my eyes and feel small in its wake. Sounds of leaves on increasing winds fill the air with unrest. Suddenly a powerful gust shears legions of fireflies from their perches in a nearby grove. Causing, for a brief moment, a centrifugal cloud of glowing streaks that are swept across black sky and cast among countless blades of bending grass. I awake, how much time has passed is unclear, hearing the rain coming now, I gaze up at inky blackness. A sudden crash tears through the white-noise of the field and lights it like the summer sun had never set. Hairs on the back of my neck rise and after-images of trees, prostrate in the wind, float behind my eyelids. The storm closes in. Cloudburst begins to pound dusty rock and earth around me, drowning out all sounds of my field and the guardian trees that incircle it. Beneath me the bedrock goes cold with rain flow and I feel alive.