Pardon my lightning
Its mind and its soul
Are all its own
Should it shock you,
Neither hysterics
Or expressions of thanks
Are necessary
Though you’re welcome,
All the same
I can neither summon
Nor disband from it
Controlling it
Is out of the question
I might just as soon
Command the sun
Writing is an attempt to aim it
Though it is akin to asking a roaring flame
To light a particular corner
Or make clear the contours of a continent
Someone tried to out-thunder me once
And did, in fact, for decades
But my lightning could not be contained
It tried to break through,
As it always has tried,
In my dark days
When I could least hear its crackling
Least feel its electric tremors
Is when it tried hardest,
Often failing,
To make me glow
To light me from within
Even when I did not see it,
It refused to be dimmed
Cancer, I think
Is the storm
That set it free
When the storm is all-encompassing
Is when the most hidden and wondrous things
Emerge from the clouds
It is still new to me,
My lightning
My boasting moments ago
Was an attempt to feel worthy of it
It’s greater than me,
My lightning
It is at once
Kinder
And more fierce
More frantic
And more content
More soul-hungry
And more soulful
It is a stranger to me,
My lightning
Yet I feel I was born with it
No
It found me in the womb
It sparked in me
A will to live
A will to survive
And when I embrace it as my own,
A will to Be
It is not always visible,
My lightning
To me or to you
I imagine
Whilst I am engaging in the humdrums of life
Punching clocks and brushing teeth
My lightning is exploring
Seeking the miracles of the cosmos
To bring them back to me
Like a hiker
With wildflowers to show me
The wildflowers are not plucked
They are living
Breathing
Existing
As if my lightning
Has brought me not flowers
But the whole meadow
In which they flourish
The people I love most in this world
Living or beyond life
Saw my lightning when I couldn’t
They fed it
Nourished it
Charged it
With their own unique electrons
Their own incomparable energy
So please,
Pardon my lightning
It means a lot to me
It is me
If I am but an atmosphere
It is the planet,
Teeming with life
And populated with possibility
When an idea excites me
Or a story leaps onto my page
Pardon my lightning
It is the wind
On which that idea rushed toward me
It is the stampede of elephants
On whose backs that story rode
When I laugh a laugh
That ripples through me
Electrifying every atom
Pardon my lightning
It is the quake
That started the tsunami
When I tell you
I see you
And my eyes show you
It is true
Pardon my lightning
It traveled through you
To get to me
And the light of its path
Illuminated your immeasurable worth
And your irreplaceable value to the universe
Should it strike you
Or graze your mind
Or cause a hum you can’t stop hearing
Pardon my lightning
It is curious by nature
And it wants to know
If you have lightning too