The storm bird sounds in the distance. I’m not sure of its botanical name but I know this bird well from living in the sub-tropics. It heralds a halt in the heat. For days, the storm bird might sing out its long melancholic call, echoing the yearning everyone feels for the rain to arrive and relieve the humidity. She calls, she calls. This bird that I have never seen yet heard all my life. Amongst the sugar cane paddocks, in the thick of a mango tree, high up in the gum trees, yet always out of sight, bringing just the call and the message that the pressure is building, that a thunderstorm is brewing.

Yesterday, I read a twitter post, “count your rainbows, not your thunderstorms”. I guess this aims to refocus the mind onto events perceived as good. Yet, inferring that thunderstorms are bad seemed strange to me. I know they can be dangerous and even threatening to lives and property, and I certainly don’t want to be riding my bike during a thunderstorm. Yet, they also carry excitement and energy. Their intensity as they build, their impending arrival that looms, the purpling of clouds, the greening of clouds if they carry hail, thunder rumbling and rolling across the sky like some giant rearrangement of furniture is happening upstairs, the spectacular lightning and the rain, yes the rain that relieves the heat, greens the gardens, and fills the backyard water tanks. Perhaps our thunderstorms deliver our rainbows.

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