The bowers of my house are hung with fog
droplets make a slow procession down the windowpane

like the opening of mass
priest easing down the aisle

But it is an August warmth outside
and humidity
like a hammer
hangs glistening at the doorstep

The air conditioning unit sputters and groans,
weary of summer

A great discrepancy grows between what I want
and who I am

Jagged and Knife-like as a mountainside
roaring through clouds afire

My tattered ends dragged into the thin air

The storm, unseen
slams, like a plane into the spine

and surges
like great waves upward, over crest
and ridge, past me,

to curl thousands of feet above
in a plume of hail and darkness

Soon

soon enough

shall the storm cross over

But in this one moment I can savor
in my all-panicked mind

Savor the breath as it moves
warming and cooling within me,
hold this blueness and blackness
and hail and rain and stone
like jewels in my eye, taste the salt and
the rust
of blood and wait,
wait for this darkening,
wait for this coming,
(almost pentecostal)
breath of God.