Attention

I stopped typing the instant I heard the rumble. It was strong. I was scared. It sounded like a blast, but it was already well past 9 p.m. and they never blast that late and the rumbling went on too long. Then I thought, no, please not an accident. But the sound was a bit south of the mining complex. I was confused. Then another rumble. I recognized it then. Thunder. A thunderstorm in mid September. It turned out to be one of the worst storms of the year.

I hadn't checked the weather forecast today and had no idea we were under a severe thunderstorm watch. We'd been out for a walk earlier this evening, on the road west of town. As I walked my mind turned to Dewdney's Acquainted With the Night, which I've been reading, and because of it I was looking southeast, in the same direction from which the rumble would later come, waiting for night-rise and loving the word penumbra, a word I found in his discussion of the dawn of night. I wanted to watch the night rise, the rising of the penumbra, but I was struck by what the sun was doing. How it was throwing giant spruce shadows onto the sand piles. With a wrestling match like that going on, who'd pay any attention to the sky?