WEBVTT

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We have hailstorms in
the summer sometimes.

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We had one this summer,
and it frightened

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my little three-year-old.

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All of a sudden, it
was coming, and he

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was excited to see it come up.

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The black clouds came
and the little streamers

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fell out of them.

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But when it finally hit, he
didn't know what to make of it.

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And this was a song,
more or less, for him,

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to try to ease him out of it.

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Although I didn't say
it to him at the time,

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because it took a
little longer to write.

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"Hailstorm."

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I wish I'd made
you a human song,

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to hold like a hand with the
odor and arc of your mother's

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hair 'til you dozed.

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Fright wants us, and it
must belong where we live,

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it finds us so often.

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Don't cry.

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I'm where the fire
roars in the next room,

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with your bears besides
you, already asleep.

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The dark of the sky is the
night's, not a storm's,

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and spills as glee, cold
at a thunderclap, melting

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like hail in a cup for tears,
and each round another story.

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In one, magpies stud
the pine near us,

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flashing just long enough
to rise as smoke puffs,

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or memories someone will
stumble on only once.

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In another, the last,
thinner still and colder,

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grooved by the years, your face
shines, the smudges erased.

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In the morning,
we all wake older.

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