Distant Lightning

A new poem, “Distant Lightning” is up on the Impolite Literature web site.

One night in our off-campus apartment in Athens, Georgia, I came to the living room to find one of my roommates sitting in the dark, looking out our window. He had a beer.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“Watching the lightning in the distance,” he said.

In the South the weather is such that you can often see storms coming from a ways away. The storm may not reach you but the lightning lights up the sky where you can see it and it’s beautiful.

A few weeks ago I was on Cape Ann, Massachusetts with my family and I went out for a nighttime ice cream run for my wife and I. As I walked down Rocky Neck in Gloucester towards the ice cream parlor, I saw lightning in the distance. It was peaceful outside, and the lightning in the clouds in the distance was beautiful.

A few days before, we had to hurry home from a fast-approaching storm. As we headed down Rocky Neck Avenue to where we were staying, I saw a woman run into Rocky Neck Park with a camera. I couldn’t resist looking to see what she was photographing and it was a set of storm clouds moving in fast.

The weather rules our world more than we can ever control or prepare for. It may rain destruction upon us, but it will inspire us.

This poem was inspired by the distant lightning past, present and future. May it continue to inspire.