Boom! The thunder rattles every pane in the house
as our Gracie, four,
leaps to our bed! Boom!
It bellows! Each uncertain pause
in clap after clap shivers spine after wobbly spine!
Whatever prayerfulness she knows
plays hide and seek in the blackness behind
her eyelids clenched like fists on nickels,
where wolves and witches
still roam tough and unredeemed.
Her mother strokes her hair and whispers:
Farmers need the rain. Does she care or listen?
Or is the harvest of whatever is coming
sown beneath each claw of lightning
thistle weed and hog wort?
The bully on the bus will punch her stomach.
The teacher will upend her desk,
her lunch and books and papers and pencils strewn at her classmates’ feet;
hypocrisies will grind like spurs on bone.
It rains and rains and rains and rains and the children cannot sleep.
