Watching and Waiting

Silence. No dogs barking, no birds singing, no squeak from the cockerel like weather vane as it stands motionless on a fence post, watching and waiting. The heavy air smells of red earth and is loaded with static charges. It is closing in; wrapping itself around the valley.

The rusty rooster stands as a silent sentinel, eyes fixed on a build up to the North. He waits in anticipation. There’ll be a warning flash, a distant boom and a tap on the shoulder as thick humid air lets fall a droplet to signal its intent. He’s seen it all before; but for now it is the watching and the waiting. The silent sentinel looks out over an old tin shed which leans drunken like at the side of rows of vines that stand as leafy soldiers waiting nervously for a battle to begin.

Then it happens; that tap on the shoulder. The air is filled by a blue flash and moments later a thunderous retort sending vibrations through the valley. Another tap on the sentinel’s shoulder introduces an ominous drumming in the distance. The leaves on the soldier vines flutter, perhaps in fear, as the drumming increases.

Suddenly the sky is filled with another flash and an immediate thunderous explosion. The drunken old shed bangs its door back in feeble defiance as the drumming becomes a roar. Tiny droplets hurtling down from the blackness above, explode into crown like shapes as they pound the roof and sides of the drunken old shed, and the limbs of the leafy soldier vines, and the face of the silent, rusty rooster.

For relentless moments the ferocious bombardment shows no mercy: then as quickly as it came it goes. The blackness becomes light; the roar fades to a drumming; and the static smell in the air becomes a clean, fresh calm.

The drumming ceases; the soldier vines stand limp; the drunken old shed bangs its door in one more defiant reply and the rusty rooster squeaks as he turns to watch again