Summer Storm

The midnight blue of twilight darkens to black
as thick, rain-heavy clouds roll over the stars.
Air, once blisteringly dry from the heat
has now thickened into suffocating soup.
A wind picks up, sweeping through streets empty,
but for a lonely saguaro cacti,
when, suddenly, light streaks through the sky,
branching into thin fingers that reach for the ground.
The eerie silence that awaited the storm is broken
as a deafening crack resonates across the flat land,
and the ground vibrates in reply.
Without warning, fat drops of rain fall from the sky,
and hit the ground still hot from the summer sun.
Steam rises as the bleak desert landscape
is happily ravished by the brutal storm.
What water survives the heat runs in small rivulets
down the hills, cracks and crevices of the earth
until the greedy, rock-hard soil sucks it up.
Moments after the summer storm began, it ends.
The clouds move on, ushered along by the hot,
sweeping wind that caresses the land with mighty gusts.
Stars return with a vengeance, renewed and cleansed,
majestically shining with a serene, dignified silence
the departing lightning could never appreciate.
The ground is already dry, yet the air is still heavy,
holding hostage the moisture from the eternally parched land.