I switch off my laptop to see flashbulb lightning turn the windows white, followed by an everywhere throaty thunder growl. I open the front door and there’s allround dull clouds letting go of warm rain in a gentle trickle – but I feel it working up a rollercoaster pace. The porch seat sighs as I sink into it, whilst grasshopper glass beads bounce off the road and disperse into the Florida street afternoon. The lightning presses again and turns on a slab of grey sky to the left. Thunder booms soon after and I feel the giant breath of it rolling this way. The air has that sweet, musky ice cream scent to it – heavy and waiting. 

The rain picks up in a cacophony of splash slick slide – falling in sheets onto the steaming street. The wind sneaks in and onto the tired timber porch like a sleek thief, and builds and climbs and carries in the now-cool rain. Lightning glows the Thursday clouds clear bright and almost immediately the hungry thunder follows up – flash boom. And then more, and the rain grows strong and cold and windy splattered onto the porch, onto me. Rain doesn’t even seem to fall now, it just is, filling the air cold and harsh whilst the swinging sprinkler next door struggles to keep up.

The front yard quickly floods, dirt floating off down a little course to resettle someotherplace. The road seems to uplift and float downhill away, until a car comes pushing along and rapidly turns it water white. And it’s all strong and full and the noise of it bounces around the porch and out across College Park. 

Now the lightning and thunder glow and roar everywhere and are the same flabloomsh, beating as one giant front line launching sonic weapons into the falling Orlando day. And I can hear Gomez’s sound of sounds in lightning as it all turns on, dancing and playing its way over me and the house, rattling and shaking and shining it allatonce. Booflashoom.

But what does the big old teary oak care in all this sound mad fury. It’s seen it all before, and does nothing more than swing a few smaller limbs to allow the storm to blow on through. It’ll continue to stand and bow as it has for days a million, and it’ll see the storm lighten as it does now, and yawn its same old daytime stretch as it all rages somewhere on. 

In the tree I see one perfect circular branch frame, with a streetlight behind turning the now-lighter rain a delicate orange as it tumbles to the street below. And here I sit on Kerouac’s porch, contemplating his giant oak, surveying his front yard, just breathing in the simple spring delight of it. 

The lighting flashes away now, the thunder taking a while to shoot its cue. The rain slows its desperate fall, the wind sinks back off the porch, and the water on the road slips quietly away. Out on the coast they’re trying to launch a shuttle up into all of this, but methinks not tonight anyway.

And it all soothes out now, gradually slowing and easing into quiet night. The rain stops, and the air is still. The lightning and thunder move further away, and my traveling show leaves me to myself. I get up to go back inside, and I turn to take a last look towards the storm’s tail. And I see a shadowy cat walking silently out onto the street. It sits by a long midroad puddle, looks down into it, surveying it closely and deliberately, before it drops its front legs, lowers its mouth and drinks thirstily from its centre.