Dave Bonta's poem follows a thunderstorm from first rumble to last drip, and it almost never raises its voice. Nothing is explained or concluded. We get a series of small sightings: a butterfly on a screen, a doe half-hidden in the rain, a fly on a trouser leg, a row of birdcalls. The central idea seems to be that a storm isn't one big event but many small ones, each happening to a different creature at its own scale. The speaker is only one of them.
The order of the stanzas follows the weather. "Distant thunder" opens the poem, then comes the "close lightning strike," then the rain, and later "The lightning past" and a brightening sky. Within that arc, the poem is built from short, mostly three-line units. Each is a single observation, and they are loosely linked rather than argued. The form recalls haiku in its brevity and its habit of simply noting what is there, though it follows no strict syllable count and has no rhyme. The free-verse lines are plain and short, and the ampersands ("& a second later, raindrops") give the poem the quick feel of notes written as things happen. That one detail, lightning followed "a second later" by rain and a fawn's cry, compresses cause and reaction into a single breath.
The imagery rewards a slow look. Wings and fluttering recur throughout. The wood satyr "clings to the screen," the rain makes the leaves flutter "random[ly]," and the fly has "quivering wings." The storm shakes everything light enough to be shaken. The word "random" matters too, because the rain is not aimed at anyone. Even the human presence is undercut. The speaker says "As I watch the storm" and is then explored by a fly, which gently shrinks the watcher from observer to landscape.
The fawn gives the poem its small emotional thread. First it bleats, apparently frightened, while the doe appears only as a "dim outline" through "sheets of rain," present but blurred. Once the lightning has passed, the fawn "stands on its hind legs / & bats at a low branch." The poem never says "relief" or "play," and it doesn't need to. The change in the fawn's behavior carries the feeling. Notice also that the poem avoids sentimental commentary; it reports and trusts us to read.
The most striking moment is formal. Six lines of "Towhee" stack down the page before the thought finishes with "all through the downpour." The repetition works as sound, because we hear the call repeated, and as sight, because the column of identical words looks like rain falling or a bird holding its note. It also holds the poem's rhythm in place for a moment, as persistence in the face of weather. The towhees keep going while everything else hides or trembles.
Then comes the poem's most serious turn: "Their one day ends / in prostration — / orange daylilies." Daylilies are named for the brevity of their blooms, so this is a small death. "Prostration" works two ways. It describes flowers beaten flat by rain, and it also carries a sense of bowing or surrender. The word is dignified rather than pitying, and the bright "orange" is the only strong color in the poem, which makes the fall feel sharper. Against the towhees' endurance, the daylilies remind us that the storm has costs, even in a gentle poem.
The ending refuses a tidy resolution. "The sky brightens, / but the storm's darkness lingers / in rain-soaked leaves." Light returns, but the darkness hasn't disappeared. It has been absorbed by the wet foliage. This is an observant detail, and it suggests that events leave residues after they are officially over.
What makes the poem worth reading is its restraint. It could have made the storm a symbol of grief or power, but it stays with specific, checkable things. By treating a butterfly, a fly, a fawn, a bird and a flower with equal attention, it quietly shifts the human viewer from the center of the scene to one small participant in it. The poem teaches a habit of mind: watch carefully, say little, and let the details do the thinking.