The sound of your thunder was in the whirlwind;
your lightnings lit up the world… -Psalm 77:18
The commonplaces of our childhood
still shimmer freshly in memory: the ozone tang
borne on the wind, petrichor
of a prairie thunderstorm boiling up on the horizon,
coral, vermilion, lavender backdrop
alabaster clouds blooming like smoke, heat
lightnings dazzling, dust cyclones dervishing
before the cooling rains drives them to ground.
The cottonwood leaves turn their leaves over in supplication,
a prayer for rain, the sizzling rattle
of willow leaf and branch bent in faithful contemplation over arroyos
tracing a line through fields of grain,
dancing before the cooling breeze.
And O, as twilight approaches
the sudden blaze of fireflies rising from the freshened earth, reversing
the fall of Lucifer from heaven,
bearing light upward in the call of love—
our dad’s ever-present pocket-knife
would punch holes in mason jar lids
and we would dance through dewy grass,
chasing beetles swirling and eddying in our wake
now here, now there.
We’d gather our golden treasures
and throw ourselves down under the locust tree
rasping cicadas sirening a song of summer joy,
watching the semaphores of luminescence,
as we ate dinner outside in gauzy nightgowns and dusty feet,
then released with gratitude to continue their courtships,
drawing our eyes upward
to the lightshow of the Perseids
as we tumbled into bed.
Holding hands, my sister and I
would breathe our prayers to the God of the overlooked,
as we drifted off to sleep, sighing, “Jesus
loves the little children,
and the lighting bugs,
and the turtle’s red eye,
and the monarch butterfly,
and God’s wonders strewn across the night sky,”
and so to sleep, safe and sound,
summer lights flashing under the heart-shaped leaves
of redbuds, grace, and gratitude
jeweled with dewdrops.
And now we plead with monarchs
to reverse their decline, planting milkweed
as a treasured contribution
rather than a weed to be uprooted, stem and branch,
and holding fast to a faith,
and rejoice at the wonder
of a resurgent summer symphony
of fireflies defying
the dying of the light, knowing
that God walks among us in morning dew,
calling us to guard the precious summer light
that lights our way toward the heavenly mansions.
