National Poetry Month, Day 6

I wrote this in the summer of 2008, on a fishing boat off the coast of Florida, in the middle of an amazing storm. We weren't under it yet, but we were watching it rain and thunder and lightning about three miles to the east of us, and still all the lines remained in the water and all the fishermen at the rail. The wind was audible, but it wasn't blowing towards us, and we could see the lightning cut the sky even though it was dark as night right above us....And so, this came....


Dark As Lightning



It shatters,

Enveloping the darkness

In momentary light.



The bolt brilliant,

Electric



Across the swathe of sky

Far darker than the land below

It stutters, hesitates,



Then rips a wall

Of electric astonishment

From horizon to horizon

Across the sea.



The camera lens,

Poor, paltry thing,

Too slow, too late,

Too feeble.



Nowhere near enough juice

To record the impetuous exclamation

Of the mother of all juice…



I find myself wondering

How often

Light, thrown in suddenness

Over the bleeding darkness

Of long-entrenched ideas



May serve only

To leave its dazzled spectators

More in the dark than before.





August 2008