• The air is electric and alive. The trees wave like fingers.
    The cicadas take cover under the front porch.
    You are afraid and want to take cover downstairs.
    "Wait" I whisper to you and follow it with a quiet " Watch".
    You would rather hide but don't want to be alone.
    So you stay by my side and take my hand.
    It's eerie still for a moment. The sky lights up and I point.
    " Do you see that tree?" I point to a dead tree who's bark
    looks like a clean bone . The lightening lights the world up
    for us again. "Do you mean the dead one" he asks and I nod.
    " It will not weather the storm" I tell him. The thunder cracks.
    " I don't think we should be here" he cautions.
    "Wait" I whisper to you and follow it with a quiet " Watch".
    The wind sheer of the storm has large trees bowing and swaying
    like lords and ladies of the King's court who dance for the benefit
    of their superior's amusement. The air whistles through out the house.
    " Why do you think that tree will fall" you ask me.I smile and tell you a story.
    A small reed had taken root and had grown next to a large proud oak.
    The reed compared itself to the mighty oak thinking " I wish I was big and solid
    and had thick strong wood like the oak. the reed felt he was small and hollow in comparison. One night dark clouds gathered. the wind whipped the little reed like a demon. he bowed and took the blows bending deeply as the wind howled.
    In the morning the reed awakened. The oak was cleaved in half and his branches scattered everyone. The reed realized that all along he thought he wanted to be the mighty oak but he had weathered the storm and the oak had not. The moral is the reed's flexibility in the storm made him stronger than the oak who stood mighty and would not bend" Raindrops hit the window hard like bugs on the windshield of a speeding car. The storm has arrived. For a split second they flatten themselves ground-ward.We hear a large cracking sound and see the dead tree fall. " We can go downstairs now I say. You saw what I had hoped for. Those that can bend are less likely to break