Moving like liquid moonlight, they carry the dreams of heaven deep into the earth.
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“Wakinyan Tanka, the great Thunderbird, lives in his tipi on top of a mountain in the sacred Paha Sapa, the Black Hills. He loves what is clean and pure. His voice is the great thunderclap, and the smaller rolling thunders that follow his booming shouts are the cries of his children, the little thunderbirds.” (Lame Deer 1969)
The Thunderbird is awake over my village.
Since the early hours his great cries have been echoing around the mountain. With the dawn, he unleashed great rains which dislodged even the mightiest of boulders.
Long forsaken river beds are being reunited with their lover – the wild stream. The two dance sinuously and sensually across the slopes and under the trees.
Moving like liquid moonlight, they carry the dreams of heaven deep into the earth.
Stopping, one can hear the twisted oaks begin to drink deeply and their wrinkled bodies start to swell with this crystal bounty.
This could be the last rainfall before the long dry of an Andalucian summer. Nature must now savour and store against the hard times ahead.
The response of plants and insects to the Thunderbirds grace will be instant and profound. By tomorrow, the bare earth will be clothed with the faintest flush of green, as long dormant seeds explode into life.
For now all is quiet, but behind the mountain the Thunderbird is preparing one last dance before he departs to sleep away the summer.
Photos: Facinas after the Thunderbird courtesy of the author