A random tweet from a Newcastle tweep, six minutes ago:
‘That’s some storm!’
We rushed to the BOM – the radar loop live on the net
And yes, there!
fingers pointing toward blobs of yellow blue and red, pushing in from the North West.
We moved our chairs on the verandah:
settled in to watch the lightning show
and listen for the following of the rain on roofs rolled nearby:
at Lysaghts.
These houses, once a dormitory for the steelworks: the coke-ovens and hearths at the blast furnace
Sit angular and uncompromising against the sky,
By no means ill mannered enough to challenge the heavenly doings
But smugly rejoicing in their ability to ignore it
From the point of view of dour reality as opposed to
Fanciful nonsense.
It falls,
soft, then harder and hard. A steady drum on an earth; and electric white-blue rents the sky.
We wonder at the stories that every culture has told its children in answer to the question:
why?