I read as much poetry as time allows and circumstance dictates: No heartache can pass without a little Dorothy Parker no thunderstorm without W. H. Auden no sleepless night without W. B. Yeats.

Peace Train is a song I wrote the message of which continues to breeze thunderously through the hearts of millions of human beings.

It is not light that we need but fire it is not the gentle shower but thunder. We need the storm the whirlwind and the earthquake.

'Peace Train' is a song I wrote the message of which continues to breeze thunderously through the hearts of millions. There is a powerful need for people to feel that gust of hope rise up again.

Thunder is good thunder is impressive but it is lightning that does the work.

The sound of 'gentle stillness' after all the thunder and wind have passed will the ultimate Word from God.

They say marriages are made in Heaven. But so is thunder and lightning.

When his life was ruined his family killed his farm destroyed Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens 'Why god? Why me?' and the thundering voice of God answered 'There's just something about you that pisses me off.'

Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.

Sydney in the 1960s wasn't the exuberant multicultural metropolis it is today. Out in the city's western reaches days passed in a sun-struck stupor. In the evenings families gathered on their verandas waiting for the 'southerly buster' - the thunderstorm that would break the heat and leave the air cool enough to allow sleep.

Sometimes we look for those thunderous things to happen in our life for our lives to change or go in the other direction. We seek the miracle. We seek the parting of the seas the moving of the mountains. But no it's a quiet thing. At least for me it was.

When I was 15 my parents left town for a month. They hid the keys to the car but I found them. That month I drove my stepdad's Thunderbird Super Coupe into Manhattan every day and I would crank Cypress Hill as I flew around the city racing the taxis.

Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.