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Emily Dickinson’s “A Thunderstorm” · The Daily Poem

• 0:00
  [music]
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  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm Sean Johnson and today is Wednesday, October 14th, 2026.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: And when I say welcome back...
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Today, I mean it a little more emphatically.
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  SPEAKER_00: If you're listening in real time,
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  SPEAKER_00: you may have noticed there was no Daily Poem the last two days.
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  SPEAKER_00: We were on a miniature,
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  SPEAKER_00: unplanned hiatus thanks to Hurricane Isaias and our total lack of power,
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  SPEAKER_00: internet, potable water for a couple of days here in Northwest Florida.
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  SPEAKER_00: But we have been mercifully preserved.
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  SPEAKER_00: We're back now.
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  SPEAKER_00: I can take a little break from hauling debris,
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  SPEAKER_00: let my chainsaw cool down, and share some poetry with you.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today's poem is by Emily Dickinson.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's called A Thunderstorm.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'll read it once, offer a few comments, and read it one more time.
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  SPEAKER_00: A Thunderstorm.
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  SPEAKER_00: The wind begun to rock the grass with threatening tunes and low.
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  SPEAKER_00: He flung a menace at the earth, a menace at the sky.
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  SPEAKER_00: The leaves unhooked themselves from trees and started all abroad.
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  SPEAKER_00: The dust did scoop itself like hands and throw away the road.
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  SPEAKER_00: The wagons quickened on the streets.
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  SPEAKER_00: The thunder hurried slow.
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  SPEAKER_00: The lightning showed a yellow beak and then a livid claw.
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  SPEAKER_00: The birds put up the bars to nests,
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  SPEAKER_00: the cattle fled to barns,
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  SPEAKER_00: there came one drop of giant rain,
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  SPEAKER_00: and then,
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  SPEAKER_00: as if the hands that held the dams had parted hold,
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  SPEAKER_00: the waters wrecked the sky,
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  SPEAKER_00: but overlooked my father's house, just quartering a tree.
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  SPEAKER_00: We find here Dickinson's customary meter, common meter, but no true rhymes.
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  SPEAKER_00: There are some internal rhymes and there are some slant rhymes,
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  SPEAKER_00: uh, A broad road, slow and claw, even barns and hands to a degree.
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  SPEAKER_00: But as the storm ramps up,
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  SPEAKER_00: these Approximate rhymes or neighboring rhymes,
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  SPEAKER_00: leaves and trees in the same line,
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  SPEAKER_00: they start to pull apart and become more dissimilar.
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  SPEAKER_00: You have an increasing number of discordant sounds.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's a really clever use of rhyme or almost rhyme here.
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  SPEAKER_00: And this poem came to mind for today because it's very similar to the experience
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  SPEAKER_00: that we had Friday night.
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  SPEAKER_00: We were dealing with Wind speeds up to 150 miles an hour and around our house
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  SPEAKER_00: and around our neighborhood.
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  SPEAKER_00: We had trees ripped out of the ground.
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  SPEAKER_00: We had people having whole aluminum sheds just sucked up into the air,
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  SPEAKER_00: roofing tiles and shingles pulled off of roofs.
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  SPEAKER_00: But our own home was miraculously unscathed.
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  SPEAKER_00: The greatest damage we had on our property was also a falling tree,
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  SPEAKER_00: but it fell mercifully away from the house.
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  SPEAKER_00: Dickinson captures this unexpected forbearance, I think, really well.
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  SPEAKER_00: There is a kind of anti-climax to this poem.
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  SPEAKER_00: The storm is building and building and building, and then nothing.
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  SPEAKER_00: This...
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  SPEAKER_00: And the final line ends with just.
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  SPEAKER_00: This delimiting word conveys the very
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  SPEAKER_00: Palpable reality of this adrenaline building up inside the person leading
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  SPEAKER_00: to this kind of ambivalence.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's a hint of disappointment almost that the thing they were stealing
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  SPEAKER_00: against hasn't happened.
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  SPEAKER_00: But of course, it's overwhelmed by relief.
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  SPEAKER_00: Here's the poem one more time.
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  SPEAKER_00: The wind began to rock the grass with threatening tunes and lo.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: He flung a menace at the earth, a menace at the sky.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: The leaves unhooked themselves from trees and started all abroad.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: The dust did scoop itself like hands and throw away the road.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: The wagons quickened on the streets.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: The thunder hurried slow.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: The lightning showed a yellow beak.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then a vivid claw.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: The birds put up the bars to nests.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: The cattle fled to barns.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: There came one drop of giant rain.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then, as if the hands that held the dams had parted hold, the waters wrecked the sky.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: But overlooked my father's house, just quartering a tree.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: This has been The Daily Poem.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.
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  SPEAKER_00: We'll be back tomorrow with another subscriber episode and then here on
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  SPEAKER_00: the main channel on Friday.
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  SPEAKER_00: Till then,
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  SPEAKER_00: you can find us at dailypoempod.substack.com to listen to past episodes of
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: The Daily Poem,
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: share your own comments or insights about each day's poem,
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: and become a subscriber and supporter of the show.
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  SPEAKER_00: For all of us at Goldberry Studios, I'm Sean Johnson wishing you happy reading.