The Fulgurite

An unexpected lightning bolt
Binds the ground to blue horizon.

You can see it for what it is
For that instant, a link, transfer,

Therefore, clearly, a metaphor.
A bolt of lightning is a word.

It delights. It frightens. It hurts.
It candles trees. It fires up grass.

There are so many ways this works.
Anthropologists still debate

About charred spots that could be hearths
Or just where lightning struck the earth.

Was this controlled or accident?
Then you wait for another one,

But words don’t make you wait like that.
Your head’s more Jupiter than Earth.

Layers of clouds all the way down
And lightning linking all at once.

You like that. You’ll take that. You can’t
Keep waiting for another word.