Like Strings on a Harp

Last night we couldn't take a ferry out to the island after all, so we went to a shop and got the world's best crabmeat rolls, a bottle of wine, and a strawberry rhubarb pie.  Some paper coffee cups and a couple of plastic forks, and we went to the Audubon Society to watch the thunderstorm roll in. 

I asked, "how does the lightning know, before it leaves the cloud, where the high tree is or the tallest mast or the lightning rod?  How does it know to strike those places?" 

My friend explained that the charged sky pulls the opposite charge from the ground, up into the treetops and the sky around it.  So that in the instant before the lightning bolt appears in the sky the charged path has already come into being, and when you see the lightning rushing from the cloud down its crooked line to the ground or the tree it is only lighting up an invisible path that was already there. 

I don't know if my friend is right but I like the imagery.  We sat and watched and listened to the lightning striking.  The loudest clap came from a bolt perhaps a quarter mile away.  The trees tossed around, showing the white undersides of their leaves while we drank wine out of paper cups and took bitefuls of pie and watched the sky changing.

Last night I dreamt I was in New York City, looking uptown.  I had a long sightline up a broad avenue and watched a thunderstorm moving through, the sky pink up high and grey just below.  It was the most amazing storm I'd ever seen, with bolts of lightning appearing sequentially in a dense thicket.  In the dream I was on my cellphone, incredulous, describing the sight to someone who didn't care all that much.  The lightning bolts are like strings on a harp, I told him, and the way the sky is lighting up it is like someone is dragging their fingers across the sky, playing this harp that is light instead of sound. 

Even though it was a dream, I'm keeping the memory.  It was the most fantastic lightning I've ever seen, or imagined. 

Comments

[a]

oh! i live in nyc, and storms are in the forecast for the next day or so. i look forward to watching it played out up the avenues.

[David]

Don't think of it as a single lightning bolt looking for somewhere to strike on the big wide ground, think of it as a big ol' pool of electricity in the sky looking for the drain...