How Does Thunder Sound?
It's been raining a lot lately.
And thundering. And lightening.
In today's New York Times
there is a beautifully crafted,
short piece about thunder on a farm.
~
I'll put it as the first comment
for your reading pleasure -
and I don't use those words lightly.
posted by rabbi neil fleischmann @ 6:44 PM
8 Comments:
July 6, 2009
The Rural Life
How the Thunder Sounds
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
For the past month, late-afternoon thunderstorms have coasted across this farm with an almost reassuring regularity. After three or four storms in as many afternoons, they seem almost domesticated — an aunt or uncle stopping in for a surly tea but leaving the air surprisingly refreshed in the aftermath. While the storm was building one day, I found myself thinking of new words, a new lexicon, to imagine the march of those storms. As the skies darkened around teatime once again, I could have sworn I heard crumpeting in the distance.
It is late afternoon as I write. There is blundering beyond the tree line. Soon the tuberous blunderheads trundle over the horizon; they begin to “wampum, wampum, wampum” until at last they’re vrooming nearby, just down the valley. Or perhaps they’re harrumphing and oomphing, from the very omphalos of the storm. Onomatopoeia is such a delicate thing.
But as the clouds tumble into position directly overhead, the sound changes, as does the color of the day. Suddenly the air is grackling, dark and furious in its plumage. The lightning and thunder begin to come as one — ZEBU! ZEBU! — drowning out the wishing of the rain and the concurring of the wind, which turns the maple leaves white-side up. Hail begins to adder on the skylights, and soon the only light left in the world is the sickly green of the storm’s hunkering belly. The roar in my ear is the sound of the gravel road toshing away, worsing downhill and forming a lake on the highway. Water runs in revels and midriffs through the pasture, where the horses stand indifferent to the caucus around them.
And then, just like that it’s over, only a bumbling far to the east, a last snicker of lightning. The sun gloats in the sky, casting a gleam on the pasture where there was so much umbering and ochreing only moments before. The static electricity of the day has been discharged, and with it the linguistic oddness I have been feeling. The storm, I realize, has left me ravenous, hungry as a raven.
Lovely photo.
A grammar nitpick:
"Lightening" is a verb, but it does not refer to the flashing of lightning.
Thanks Kishke. It's from this site:
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/ozcazz/comment.html?entrynum=12
about a third of the way down the page. I like it too. It was the first picture that came up on google images when I searched "thunderstorm, farm."
How could I have written that more correctly? I like how it sounds and I think people get what I meant.
How could I have written that more correctly?
Maybe this way:
It's been raining a lot lately.
Lots of thunder. And lightning.
I hear you. A student once gave me a piece of paper and on it was written Poetic License. I like how my version sounds, so I'm going to use that P.L.
Fine by me.
Thanks, appreciate the imput and understanding.
Oh, I love playing with words so very much. One of my favorite exclamations is "This breeze is so delicious!" My kids laugh: "What does it taste like, Mom?" But to me, the breeze truly *is* delicious -- a feast for the senses.
My favorite lines in Klinkenborg's wonderful riff on thunderstorms:
the wishing of the rain and the concurring of the wind
a last snicker of lightning
OTOH, "crumpeting" didn't work for me. The mental image was odd and cumbersome. Hmmm, I bet those thunderclouds were cumbering down the valley as well as trundling.
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