Sheet Lightning
All night there has been sheet lightning from the tropical storms and hurricanes that keep circling Georgia, heading further north or west – Claudette, Bill – none have come here directly, but the remnants of clouds and rain stirred out of the Atlantic and the Gulf form sheet lightning, wide reflections of light that flash up whole quarters of the sky. If you’re driving 280 or walking the sand roads of my father’s house, it’s like watching a distant war.
Used to, when I was younger, and in the middle of a dry summer, I kept waiting for the sheet lightning to close in. We needed rain, and somewhere, someone was getting doused. All night, the lightning played across the sky, a trick of weather. The next day, the ground was dry as the last day, the sky empty-blue and still and parched.
I used to wonder what it would be like to run the black sky in that way, along those sheets of light. As soon as one flash ends, another starts up and rumbles, and you, running, have to catch the next flash and the next, chasing.
Tonight is no different as my father and I come home on 280. Except for the rain. This time we have rain, and I want to be up there in the relay of flashes until I’ve covered the whole expanse, breathless, blinded, ready to sleep and fall into the black sky.