When a bolt of lightning falls in love
with an old woman, sex is reinvented
as the world’s first toaster oven.
When lightning falls in love with a middle-
aged woman, lightning gives
birth to an electric guitar. When
lightning falls in love
with a married man, his wife becomes
an arsonist. When lightning falls
in love with an arsonist, she
gives birth to a son. When
lightning falls in love with my son, I wake up
to the streaking comet-scream of the fire alarm
in the hallway of a motel
on the wrong side of an ocean, and
I think, Thank God. I think: all
this lightning has always had
a plan, and if lightning can make plans, and if
lightning, like lightning’s plans, goes on, and
will go on
after I’ve gone—then
my own lightning’s work here is almost done.
