Summer Lightning

Tempered through the backdoor screen, the air,
metallic, saturated, flows as cold
as water from a mountain lake. The old
tympanic battle roll precedes the flare
of lightning and the flat-out thunder slam
as rain sweeps in. It splashes at our knees
in light refracted from the clouds and trees,
a yellow-green illuminated dam

that breaks, evaporates into a flame,
subliminal, an X-ray of the dead,
the vine-entangled apple tree, the flight
of rapture through exploding air. It’s said
that in the end we navigate this same
catastrophe of metal into light.

by Rick Mullin