Menacing dark clouds
Navajo rain fell over red canyons
Lightning to breathe white fear
. . . Thunder followed . . .
and somewhere nearby is a Jewish Kugelblitz.

I knew the rain storm was coming
The air danced with wet sand off golden dunes
The horse began to get excited
from the whispers of rolling thunder in the distance
I had a small phobia of thunderstorms.

Slowly he crawled across the sky, angry
he's large and bumpy with thick strapping gray muscles
This storm cloud was male, that's what Grandma says
"When the clouds gather anger they cry thunder and rain,
this is the male rain."

The sudden winds kicked up sand into my eyes, I blinked
In a drying puddle from yeserday's storm I see Darcy's face
Darcy is a Jewish girl from Phoenix
She's a friend who's also afraid of the male rain
her brother Ean brought on her fears.

Grandma brought on my fear of storms
She told us kids to sit still and don't talk during a storm
or we'd get struck by lightning for disobeying
When Darcy was young, she used to sit at the window
and watch the lightning show during monsoon season.

Ean walked to his sister by the window
He grinned his teen-age teeth and said
"You know if you stand too close to the window,
a Kugelblitz will get you."
"A Kugelblitz?" she asked questioningly.

"Yeah, a ball of lightning to chase you."
She never watched the light show again
Instead during stormy nights, she silently cried in bed
Little Jewish tears added to the monsoon's rain
She told me this story one rainy night when we were alone.

I told her about the male rain and what not to do during a storm
She told me about Ean and his sadistic tale of the Kugelblitz
I guess Jews and Navajos aren't all that different
We were both afraid of thunderstorms
We had other past storms we were afraid of too,
She had the Holocaust
And I had America.

...Lightning flashed...Thunder followed...
I began whipping my horse trying to escape the storms.

Hershman John