Lightning

lights the inside of the clouds over the basilica, behind the gold cross. I imagine a lightning bolt hitting the cross, how dramatic it would be. But I think I've seen a lightning rod sneaking up above it in the daylight. Ready to absorb the impact of an act of God. The lightning makes the clouds pink, the cotton-candy pink of last night's sunset. And everyone says sunset clouds look like cotton candy, but I can't think of a more perfect description. Clinically perfect. Clouds stretched pink, thin, fibrous, starting at the gold cross and widening over candy-blue sky. Tonight's lightning makes the clouds the same color, but just in places, on one side of a cloud and then another, a flash and you missed it. A breeze comes in, slowly, slightly, piercing the maddening hot, the hot that feels hotter because the heat wave broke briefly and then grew again. So humid it feels like I'm wrapped in the clouds, suffocated in them, even though I'm not that high, just on the tenth floor, level with the dome but not the cross. In my camping chair, I think of cold wind off the ocean, a beach fire, cinders and sparks rising. Morning, wrapped in an unzipped sleeping bag, a plastic thermos lid of hot chocolate, my burned tongue. Or of night coming in fast, the breeze turning, waves stronger, camp chair communion on the other side of the country, my North star home, west or east. Churches without crosses, without lightning rods.