Driving Through the Summer Storm

Near the Drum Mountains in central-western Utah the virga approached us, and we sped towards it in my 1993 Nissan truck. Dark blue and humanlike it swept the plane. It touched down somewhere, its feet the fleeting monsoon, welcomed by reaching greasewood and shivering russian thistle. Lightning cut across the dark form and we entered the deluge. Flash and boom inside of it, and flash and boom again. The rain transitioned from a heavy downpour to individual drops and the drops lessened and we looked back and the great dark form was now behind us; we had passed through its body. Lightning hit the sagebrush and greasewood plane where we had just been. The smell of sagebrush and dirt came in when I cracked my window. The form leaned heavily to one side and its shoulders led its apparition-like legs and dragged them across the desert. A rainbow began above and gained intensity, existing simultaneously with the other wrathful deity. God of the columnar storm in retreat, god of forgiveness above it, god of grace beyond that in the everlasting blue, while the Drum Mountains looked on, dark and stoic, booming dully. All gods shifting, circling one another.