How Lightning Strikes
Mary Ann McFadden

When hail beats down the ripening wheat
as it sometimes does, where can we turn our despair
except on those we love? When we’ve kicked the cats
and split hairs, and spat at our aging faces int he mirror,

what have we done? The weather isn’t fair.

It’s also true that we don’t deserve summer.
Here summer comes, ready or not, and though we may hate
loving it, this pup the size of a grizzly bear that romps on us
and licks our necks, there’s no escape,

nothing to pay for the pleasure.

We stand here looking out to mountain peaks
in air so clear our eyes ache, considering how a hunk of chalk
scrapes against the slate, and how the days remark,
how nothing stays the same, there’s nothing we can keep

and how lightning strikes, and isn’t a punishment.