Tonight thunder hangs on the sky
like God’s underbelly.
We soon forget the deep rubbings
of crickets in the scorched night
and God becomes kabuki
in a white mask, her performance
crackling over the hushed audience
of earth. Lightning cloaks
the black bones of night,
fastens the hidden folds of stars.
The night my father died, I’d watched
for storms, some cosmic reflection
of his demise, this human being
of gigantic proportions, now unscripted,
consigned to the wings, insensible body
shrouded in sheets of electric white.
But no tempest, just tropical heat
in the wrong hemisphere,
mute claustrophobia, little wooden
flutes of humidity.
