Duane Esposito
WHERE'S THE THUNDER?

Perhaps in conflict. Perhaps in pain.
Perhaps in a lifetime away from youth.

Perhaps a controlled interior motion
drowning in a lake you fear to swim,

or the Fall breeze across a field, your body
down, immersed in wind’s language.

Perhaps a hawk circles--
a fragment of an already

radiant love, this time before we die.
Is it time? Is it definitely time?

When the moon’s in sky, do we
listen to a loon on a lake & realize,

at last, what a mate‘s for: to maintain vigil,
to trust we may never cry for long?

When your feet press against my thigh,
& we believe pleasures shouldn’t vanish,

will we witness a smaller planet,
& the ocean on one side of our lives?

Will horizons offer visions & nothing
be imaginary about our union,

the circles form on water, the sky
above a landscape on our young world?

Perhaps when it’s possible to celebrate the invisible,
God as the summer thunder, power crucial as bones,

& all angels are ashamed of terror, we’ll kiss
the scabbed, calloused hands of an old woman.

Perhaps when you wake beside me,
soaked by the vast world of sleep,

when you collapse against my body,
I can’t help but lean toward you,

our love never distant from our traumas,
& our time unhinged from grief.