Mary Street

Walking home alone

in the electric sheen

of post-thunderstorm
April evening,

the night is lambent

with reawakened moonlight;

the street is tossed

with foolish bits
of flying energy

released from
pre-storm torpor

by the punk
of lightning’s sulphur,

by the voice of thunder
in these mountains.

Branches arc
across the streetside,

narrow dark curves
of dispossessed tree

flung down from
home by wind.

Leaves, like paper-thin mice

with brains made
frantic by rain,

hurry past,

their voices the sylvan inheritance

of each season’s violence,

done to trees:

the pressure of ice
in winter,

its weight on branches
in leafless stillness,

the intemperate blasts of spring,

as cold air gives
way to warm,

as frost is displaced
by the small

bright fires of
growth in wood.

I recall the August blasting

of a favorite white oak by lightning:

A ravaged ash
alone in a dry field,

a scorched sentinel
made electricity’s victim.

Then autumn’s disavowal
of green, its dismantling
of that cloak
of shuddering chlorophyll,

its dispersal of color
into earth,

the souls of sweetgums
made ready

for the ascetic
winter lives of owls

and sleeping creatures,

each naked branch
a voiceless prayer

of restoration
and of pagan grace.

©Laura Sorrells 1996

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