warm, moist air; summer thunder in the sky last night. I went to the window to watch the grand orchestration, but I had to keep pulling away for the fat raindrops splashing against the screen. The air moved spastically through the window like the storm was hyperventilating; in a little, out hard, stop, then in and back out real hard, all in a second and a half. I watched the low sky for action, the features on the street were muted by heavy splashing rain, and distant rumbles grumbled in the roiling sky. There was a splash against the screen, I pulled back, returning instantly to not miss anything. More spray, more withdrawing and returning. A flash in the distance, followed by thunder. I watched the sky above the house next door, and to its right and left. Then right after another volley of big rainblobs pushed me back away from the window, I quickly returned to my vantage, where my glance met a perfect, brilliant bolt of blue lighting in the sky above the neighbors back porch, as if it had waited for me to look there.
I went back to my previous activities with a sense that I was held in the benevolent awareness of something greater.
Before bed, I noticed movement high on the wall beside me. A two-inch centipede was making its way across the wall just below the ceiling. I regretted my task, but continued it nonetheless, bringing a chair and a junk-mail catalog to a place below the living creature. I held still as I stood on the chair—magazine rolled tight and poised to strike—and I considered the beauty of this innocent thing as I was about to kill it. It wore its graceful flagella like a flamboyant gown, and I noticed but refused to acknowledge that within the garrulous disguise was the tiny, harmless form of its naked body.
I have let stay the mark it left, with some of those graceful strands splaying out lifelessly from its last instant of stunned awareness.
|
|
|
|