Lightning: A Portent

You knew what it meant—

you had studied the signs,

and the cracked and flaming oak

stood like some pagan pyre

in your eyes,

but you paid it no mind.

Even when it fell,

setting the haybales ablaze,

you just turned up the volume

and continued lying

in your bed,

the lowing in the field

drowned

before it reached your ears.

It never mattered to you—

there were no dreams left

in your mind, no difference

in waking or sleeping.

When the lightning struck,

you were lying in bed,

and the whole theater of the world

disappeared

in one flash;

the tree of the world

split in two,

and you

had been tied to it for days—

you never thought you

would come free this way,

never thought you

would be the last

to hang there

with only one or two

of us to whisper

in your ear.

~N.B.