Oh, but the sky is a quarrel
of tongues flashing metallic light.
It has come on slow, sifting through
the heavy laden hand of afternoon,
blue breathing out clouds,
their shadows casting a velvety
grey skin over the veranda
and a few spits of rain splat
like steel bullets into the dust scrawled drive.
I wait on the porch, my sanctuary, my tomb.
I wait and I worry over the workers
hunched in the wide open fields behind
the house, blueberry filled trays
at their feet, wide brimmed straw hats
with rings of mottled brown sweat upon their heads,
dozens of nimbus shadows swallowing faces,
ghostly indigo stained fingers murmuring,
probing, pulling, dropping, a rhythmic
harvest over this dry shell of earth.
I worry over the hummingbirds I love,
their trilled prayers cast to the bustling wind,
they must watch intent and safe, they must,
from near the tops of swaying trees
with their tiny cup nests filled
with baby beaks crying–what if one
falls out, I must not think of that–those little
lustrous bird bodies press hard
into twigs and grass and bits
of string–such industry from our leavings.
I worry over all manner of fish
fighting the torrent of foam
in the river ten miles down the road.
It might rise too quick if a deluge comes,
their beautiful luminous ribbon bodies flung
against rock, bruising and slicing and peeling
their jeweled scales, released blood
swirling, diluted, lost with their spawn
on the banks and dry death.
I worry over planets and stars
in the beautiful black depth of this frigid
universe. I worry one will tilt on its axis
just a fraction too far, yanking at our gravity
so this storm becomes a tempest biblical
beyond all belief; or the ground beneath this porch
will split in two swallowing us whole, and whose planets
are so far away, too far for my worry
to reach, too far and cold and empty
for there to be care.
Lightning fills my eyes. Ions rise cutting heat
to the quick. A trigger sparks, I abandon why;
there is not turning back. The cord snaps,
beads of worry clatter one by one
to the splintered wood at my bare feet. I open
my mouth, I roar with the thunder. I rise,
I breathe deep, I skin fear from my mind
in long gory strips, I take three
shallow steps off the porch and release myself
to it all.
Brava, I followed your every move and took the leap.