Thunder

Thunder

The hard rain crushed the grass and flowers
and rested heavy on the hills, snapping at the treetops.
A softer darkness--
and it lay down across the flattened branches
and found itself in the bark's slick ridges,
slid through them, reunited and
rumbled across the ground, with a quiet and rushing joy.

The moon rose in the softening clouds
and the lights along the driveway snapped on,
blazed brighter than stars against the dark grass
and shimmered across the asphalt's depths and pebbles.

I rose from bed's dull shadows--
chilled and the night shone like a jewel
in the water streaking the foggy glass.

I knelt and undid the latches-- they stuck, a little--
I pressed the windows out as far as they went
and it all came seeping in,
Quiet-- and pooled across the carpet
and my face.

Across the click of the fan-- crickets
wind brushing against the ferns,
and one bird piping, now, in the dogwood
because it lost the day huddled against the trunk.

Not a night for throbbing and howling
but for low and steady pulses
for stretching out and stroking whatever bit of
the world you can reach to
and the mouth's slow undoing into a half-smile...

-- slammed the glass shut
and rounded on me, half-asleep and raging
for letting in the heat.

and I have gone from peace and thunder.