Lightning by Thomas Zimmerman

Elsa Lanchester in The Bride of Frankenstein, 1935

The streaks of gray like lightning in your mother’s

hair: like Elsa Lanchester, The Bride 

of Frankenstein. You’ve stomped around like Karloff

all your life, a magpie of a man,

an animated corpse. You think you died 

again, mid-2010s, imagined price 

of childlessness. Your introspection’s garnered 

little. You’ve had stitches in your head,

you’ve stood in lightning–Texas, Iowa,

and North Dakota–screaming It’s alive!

Some friends of yours got drunk one night, burned down

a farmer’s barn. Imagine fire reaching

heaven, Zeus in anger hurling it

back down some night as summer lightning. Almost

half a century ago, you and

your red-haired girlfriend loved beneath a massive

oak tree later struck by lightning. Lost

a limb. These branches, bolts, and veins: in skies,

in breasts, in backs of parents’ hands. Now yours.

And something quickens in you. Pray for rain.

***

Thomas Zimmerman teaches English and directs the Writing Center at Washtenaw Community College, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. His latest book is Dead Man's Quintet (Cyberwit, 2023).  https://thomaszimmerman.wordpress.com/