LIGHTNING FRAMED BY WINDOW

LIGHTNING FRAMED BY WINDOW

Sitting in a window, unadorned by shade,
Ghosts of past dreams reappear,
Like witches haunt the hollow glade,
In the comfort of this dusky room,
Dry for now and warm,
I sit and wait my destiny,
In the coming summer storm.

The wind it hollers vengeance,
The rain in torrents comes,
Threatening to wash away,
The thunder how it drums.
Flying through the summer rain,
Like a hapless birthday wish,
Comes every kind of living stain,
A blight of fowl and fish,
I see the sharks loom menacing,
The crayfish and the minnow,
Parading by in a ship of fools,
Lightning framed by window.

The thought comes that perhaps I should,
Remove myself from the windowsill.
But alas transfixed like stone or wood,
I stay completely still.
While a Noah's ark of two and two,
Floats outside in the ramshackle rain,
I swear I have all but given up,
To the siren song of a reckless pain.

A pain that haunts my dreams at night,
Like an orphan or a widow,
Strikes what's left, heaves a violent cleft,
This lightning framed by window.
It seeps through all the pipes and cracks,
Thunder rips at my inner core,
Not a wish or a thought held dear,
Spared by this awful thunderbolt,
This fowl and fitful fathomless fear,
That crashes 'round my lifeboat.

I call for you on the other shore,
To lead me to dry land,
But you shrug, you cannot hear me
I can at last no longer stand,
Ripped apart in terror, seam by anxious seam,
I struggle to awaken but it's real and not a dream.
The storm it overpowers, trampling all my will.
My thoughts go crashing through my head,
Pitch black the room to a breathless crescendo.
As water cracks the hapless spread
Of lightning framed by window.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2015
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED