Lament for thunder

I find that the strangest things make me homesick. Right now, I really miss the storms in Atlanta. Back home, the summer months meant really explosive storms. You could feel them coming hours before they arrived. The entire atmosphere would change: it would become degrees cooler, the humidity would rise and then drop dramatically and the ground would begin to reverberate with the rumbling of distant thunder. The storms back home shook the entire city, they made daylight turn to night and made night light up with the fireworks of electric energy. The thunder would come long before the onslaught of rain; and when the rain did come, it soaked the earth wholly. As soon as it started, though, it would be over.

New York lacks the excitement of big storms. When I wake up in the morning I can feel the rain coming. It sits over Manhattan heavy and humid. It promises me that this time it will rain hard enough that I won't be able to see and the earth will become saturated. It promises flashes of lightning and soul-shattering thunder. But it lies and I am left disappointed with the distant soft growl of thunder and rain that isn't even sufficient to satiate my plants.