Four trees in the yard are dead from lightning strike:
a locust behind the laying house, a hackberry that shaded
the bee hive, a maple inside the border of my drive,
a tulip poplar along the fence of the weanling field –
now a bird perch which sheds its branches one-by-one.
And in the garden among the stone-berry bushes
a pine pole stands and holds the line that brings light
for the pleasure of my reading until way past dark.

Today, weeding the asparagus bed as a thunder storm
rushes in from the west, I turn in time to see the sizzle
of the wire before the tumultuous bolt of voltage
corkscrews up my spine, kicks me like a wicked kiss;
then the brutal slam, a heavy frozen fist, where even
its near miss is a direct hit, a breaker in my flow of time.