We have hailstorms in the summer sometimes.
We had one this summer, and it frightened
my little three-year-old.
All of a sudden, it was coming, and he
was excited to see it come up.
The black clouds came and the little streamers
fell out of them.
But when it finally hit, he didn't know what to make of it.
And this was a song, more or less, for him,
to try to ease him out of it.
Although I didn't say it to him at the time,
because it took a little longer to write.
"Hailstorm."
I wish I'd made you a human song,
to hold like a hand with the odor and arc of your mother's
hair 'til you dozed.
Fright wants us, and it must belong where we live,
it finds us so often.
Don't cry.
I'm where the fire roars in the next room,
with your bears besides you, already asleep.
The dark of the sky is the night's, not a storm's,
and spills as glee, cold at a thunderclap, melting
like hail in a cup for tears, and each round another story.
In one, magpies stud the pine near us,
flashing just long enough to rise as smoke puffs,
or memories someone will stumble on only once.
In another, the last, thinner still and colder,
grooved by the years, your face shines, the smudges erased.
In the morning, we all wake older.