what the thunder said

thunder rolled at last

in the rain-ragged air

and its echoes

too long in the hills

returned

from misremembered directions

to remind us of the lightning

the flash of it as it lit the earth

with a moment’s bright desire

and the torrential gift of rain

that fell like needles of sky

© BH, 2026

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Could be a ‘said’ series here… I’d forgotten, but this must have been part of something longer. I wrote a poem a while ago called ‘what the soil said’, probably extracted from the same piece. This, at first a passing reference to thunder in the original, evolved and then I couldn’t resist the title as a nod to old Tommy Stearns.