LIGHTNING

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

Trying to make sense of lightning is about more

than science. How long should students lower

their heads, consult their books, run computer

simulations and not look outside.

 

By the time you read this message a bolt will

have struck in dozens of locations, though

you might not have registered the flash. The smell

of ozone in your nose, learning to count for thunder.

Did you know lightning can be silent. An owl.

 

Friction travels from cloud to cloud. It’s over my head

I’ve heard

told. There’s a space in the great codes for interpellations,

gnostic meanings, hidden from the rabble: debates about what’s

in plain view

 

Can someone without sight see a storm.

What if they also cannot hear.   

Lightning can be a figment of the mind:

logos. But if we cannot make observations

what is science.

 

Every one of us has dreams. There were heat storms

over my crib. I couldn’t talk but in my gut I knew some

thing was wrong.

 

Let the infants cry. For the betterment of science.

Watch them, how they respond. From the blur comes

a woman’s features. Mother? But not the storm.

 

They cry because they know she’s an electric force,

violence with the texture of milk—

Jeremy Nathan Marks knows that his own instinct to try to enucleate the problem is a self-deception. But he's stubborn. He lives and writes (stubbornly) in Canada.

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