Linda Jacobs' Childhood Memory Captured in "That Stormy Night"

Lesley Misko Editor

Linda Jacobs' Childhood Memory Captured in "That Stormy Night"

National Poetry Month was launched by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996. For the rest of April, each day we will publish a poem: your favorite poem--one of your own or one by a published author.

Send your poem to janeEstahl@comcast.net with a sentence or two about yourself as the author or why the poem is among your favorites. And stay tuned for announcements of local poetry readings in the area that you may wish to attend to celebrate the integral role poets play in our culture.

That Stormy Night
~ Berlie Doherty

That stormy night
when the wind moaned like a wolf
and bent the trees, and shook the house
I wondered if it could blow the stars away.

What then—if their glittering dust
lay among the fallen leaves next day
crystals and splinters in the morning light?
I’d sweep them up and put them in a box

and bring them home to you. You’d say
Nonsense. What you see up there
is light that’s millions of years away
you know that, don’t you?

Yes, I know. But still
I’d shake my box of stardust
hold it tight
knowing the wind hjad blown the stars away

that stormy night.

by Linda Jacobs*

When I was a little girl, we had a thunderstorm one summer night that frightened me out of my bed. I went downstairs and my Dad took me out on our front porch, which was covered with an aluminum awning.

He told me not to be afraid, the thunder was the angels in Heaven bowling, and when they got a strike, the lightning flashed.

We sat there together listening and watching the storm, and I realized I had no reason to ever be afraid of a thunderstorm again.

"That Stormy Night," one of my favorite poems, took me right back to that front porch with my Dad, thinking of how the “stardust” was magical that night, and I’ve carried the memory with me always.

* Linda Jacobs, graphic designer, has been publishing a poem a day recently. She offered a half dozen of her favorites for National Poetry Month; she couldn't choose just one, so we chose for her!