by Jeremy Nathan Marks
Trying to make sense of lightning is about more
than science. How long should students lower
their heads, consult their books, run computer
simulations and not look outside.
By the time you read this message a bolt will
have struck in dozens of locations, though
you might not have registered the flash. The smell
of ozone in your nose, learning to count for thunder.
Did you know lightning can be silent. An owl.
Friction travels from cloud to cloud. It’s over my head
I’ve heard
told. There’s a space in the great codes for interpellations,
gnostic meanings, hidden from the rabble: debates about what’s
in plain view
Can someone without sight see a storm.
What if they also cannot hear.
Lightning can be a figment of the mind:
logos. But if we cannot make observations
what is science.
Every one of us has dreams. There were heat storms
over my crib. I couldn’t talk but in my gut I knew some
thing was wrong.
Let the infants cry. For the betterment of science.
Watch them, how they respond. From the blur comes
a woman’s features. Mother? But not the storm.
They cry because they know she’s an electric force,
violence with the texture of milk—
Jeremy Nathan Marks knows that his own instinct to try to enucleate the problem is a self-deception. But he's stubborn. He lives and writes (stubbornly) in Canada.
