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HEAT LIGHTNING
I take a snapshot while you are laughing
and remorse grabs my wrist; I have kept
some thing you did not intend
to give: the curve of your breasts shaped
by your raised arms, your lips parted.
I have puréed red peppers boiled
in coconut milk and green curry paste;
I have dismantled the plumbing
under the backed-up kitchen sink
and have done what had to be done
with a furious mop. The night is now
compliant. I am peeling shrimp
under a pink and gray el Greco sky
that is muttering thunder.
As I steer south from the badlands
north of Monument Valley,
the thunderheads roll in to meet me.
In the slot between the darkness of the sky
and the darkness of the plain the distant
mesas catch fire. The primate in me,
tingling with the charged sky, yells
to tear limbs from treetops and to pound
the jungle floor in a frenzied dance.
Such was the first drama: the dog days
of late summer, the clouds heaped
and heavy, a hundred hands applauding,
creating the rain. This storm I owe to you
for a brittle thread of stolen lightning.
   
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