A Thunderstorm in Mentone – a Poem for my Father

The wind is different tonight.

The leaves on the trees move easily.

Summer rain cleans the horses

grazing the wet grass in the pasture

across the road.

I saw lightning for the first time

in months. It looked like a ragged

tuning fork, and I felt the thunder

roll through my body.

Today, in a house a hundred miles

away I saw my father for the first

time in ten years.

He sat beside me with his bare shoulder

against mine as we looked at a map.

Years ago I would have wanted more to

happen and felt a disappointment,

but this meeting moved easily.

A part of me – the part that always wanted more

felt cleaned. The lightning comes

down in straight lines and then

separates into its tines. A tuning

fork is like that too.

We talked about mileage; then

he showed me the peas he’d grown in his

garden.

This is the most affection I am going

to get, I thought.

Today, this amount of affection was finally enough.

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