the thunder is going to read to you

the thunder is going to read to you

Darcy Luetzow Staddon

we think the thunder’s voice is the stuff  of nailing the
galaxy’s corners taut in the sky and that may be
but I wasn’t there when that all started up and perhaps the
voice spoke calmly over the empty table, please pass the 
salt.

I shout myself into existence every morning.  how about
you.   I agitate myself in the pre-game locker room.   I tape
motivational posters to the walls.  

but my story’s being read in the other room at the speed of
the rocking chair we’d placed in our daughter’s nursery.  

the thunder.  it seems to make a bit of a fuss.  it seems
to want to talk about itself, its volume, its high stack of
chairs.  

what I don’t remember is its humility.  it is ravaging
around, re-directing eyes to the windows.  it’s shouting of
something ahead of itself.  
did you see
that?  

the thunder is always leaving the room and that is the
story, that is my story. the lightning that claws and digs up
my bones fires off.  

even as I shout about it, I’m ducking out of the room to
look for another instance of this.

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Darcy Luetzow Staddon
Poet & Musician

Photography by Davide Oricchio