3rd Nature Poem

Wind whistles over the plain, a thousand voices speaking in unison. Dark clouds, mottled in grays and blacks, race over the prairie, bringing with them an eerie silence as the air stills. An intake of breath, a single cricket chirps forlornly. The summer storm breathes in once, and then roars its fury as rain begins to fall. First one drop, then another, until the prairie grass was matted and wet, like the hair of some massive animal. The lone tree on a hill bends over in the gale, its green leaves fluttering in the wind. A crackling fork of lightning streaks across the sky, jumping from one cloud to another. Then came the clap of thunder, shaking the ground, and startling a family of field mice living in a woven grass nest. A rickety old cottage sits in a dip in the ground. Inside lives an old man, creaking and clattering as much as the house itself. The floorboards squeal, a pig howling as feet tromp over him. The old man groans, as he sits in his rocking chair, a grumbling noise rather like a pot of boiling water with a frog in it. A young woman sleeps on a dusty couch, her raspy snores bouncing around the room like the thunder crashing outside.