As you grow older, you feel
the rain before the first drop
plops upon your skyward face
because aches in wrists & knees
are the raging storm clouds unseen.

O, how it was to be young
& without a care or worry,
running through the rain
because it was fun instead
of trying to seek shelter.

Each drop a baptism
to bring your spirit
a sense of renewal
you didn’t know
you’d need before the pain.

I used to sit on the porch
with my dad during storms;
he’d tell me ghost stories
that always seemed to fall
on the current day’s date.

When you’re just a child,
you don’t think of all
that can be lost in a tornado
while sitting in a bathtub with your bub,
having the time of your life.

Tim Heerdink is the author of Somniloquy & Trauma in the Knottseau Well, The Human Remains, Red Flag and Other Poems, Razed Monuments, Checking Tickets on Oumaumua, Sailing the Edge of Time, I Hear a Siren’s Call, Ghost Map, A Cacophony of Birds in the House of Dread, Tabletop Anxieties & Sweet Decay (with Tony Brewer) and short stories ‘The Tithing of Man’ and ‘HEA-VEN2’. His poems appear in various journals and anthologies. He is the President of Midwest Writers Guild of Evansville, Indiana.