Lightning Just Finds Some People

Found Martha Stewart three times

             I just attract electricity. I’m so powerful.

Struck three girls dead standing over

             a listless baby Mary Anning, another great find,

discovered by lightning. This future lady fossil hunter

             animated in the calamitous jolt. Shocking,

far-fetched even, Franklin wasn’t struck, hiding

             under his ruffled sleeve a branch-shaped scar,

winding trail of red-leafed fern fronds

             radiating. His kite keen to wrangle it raw

into a jar with only a key, a string & a silk handkerchief

             aloft waving in the Philadelphia sky

like a bullfighter’s red muleta enticing a charge. Hatched

             his plan to scale a church spire, hell bent on scaring up

any bolt he could wrestle out of heaven. Sort of like

             Doc Brown fumbles when he wired up the clock

tower, a stroke of genius

             sending Marty P. Keaton back to

a future lightning chose little Mary,

             a real live lost & found prodigy.

Her peeled eyes flickered for each limestone glint in swirled in

             snakestone, ancient ammonites wreathed in shale cliffs,

protrusions in muddy sand. She dredged up ray-finned fish

             excavated lizard bones, seashells, exhumed whole dinosaurs.

If it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger–Martha knows best

             it’s a good thing. Her infamous stock

a recipe for success

                               simmers in a classic opalescent tureen.

When Scorpio Rises, the Hunter Flees Below the Horizon

It’s hard to see it coming, but I think it’s better to know,

how the great dimming of Orion’s shoulder star lurks

prequel a supernova, supergiant red like

a tomato lost on the ISS 8 months ago. Shoulder pain

suggests bracing for a blow, hunching to protect the soft

places–shielding the heart,

real or imagined. Ball & socket joins arm to body.

Orion, mythical hunter, reaches from the celestial

equator, wields his weapon, smelted in a stellar nursery

–a nebula bursting with baby stars, on high guard

he bears this December night, its quick arrival on the heels

of afternoon. I am bracing for a nebulous & imminent

dying, my parents’ generation peeling away, a lid off

a sardine can, roof blowing off of my house, exposing me

a constant erosion, a winking out. I think,

this is a new kind of being alone. I think, it takes 8

muscles to stabilize a shoulder, to hold it in place.

Microtears collect in the tendons of my rotator cuff

I cannot shoulder this much loss, so much light receding.

It starts in June, light losing 3 minutes each day until

it’s night at 5. Hope is still a thing,

even a massive ball of burning gasses only

a distant point, dying star’s photosphere

shockwaves & radial pulsations. Quick eclipse

I toss my salt over it, see where a blade protrudes.