sudden thunder
dad’s anger a dark cloud
lightning sears my ear
My Dad was from the old school, such as you read of in Oliver Twist, where boxing a child’s ears was meant to improve hearing and slapping them on the head would “smarten them up” or “knock some sense into them.” And you didn’t always get any forewarning, either. First the smack, then the explanation of why.
My mom-in-law talked of one of her brothers who suffered lifelong hearing damage because teachers regularly boxed pupils’ ears. I don’t think children should go undisciplined, but I’m glad those days are gone.
The Ragtag Daily Prompt this morning: LIGHTNING
I’ll confess, I’ve often spelled the LIGHTNING that zips across the sky like the LIGHTENING that the sky does at dawn. Which isn’t so far wrong, because lightning does lighten the sky. But now I’ve looked it up and I see that one definition of lighten is to give out flashes of lightning. So I’m not too far out.
Searching through my Dropbox to see what I might have as a response to today’s prompt, I came across a file of a dozen or so need-to-be-polished haiku verses, including the one above. So I’ll polish and post a few more.