Thunder Beings
Hear an audio version of this piece
1.
Sunbear of the Ojibway nation
would send us to choose stones
for the cardinal points on the medicine wheel
that stood for how it all works.
We called to the north that he named Waboose.…………
We called to the south that he named Shawnodese………..
We called to the west that he named Mudjekeewis………….
And we called to the east that he named Wabun………..
Unused to personing directions or elements or the unseen
(except when we were kids
or when we heard our dads trip
on a rock that they cursed over its intent to kill them),
we played along with the medicine man.
But after the calling of each strange name,
what always came
was the rain--
one, two, three, four and more times than chance.
We asked Sunbear why and he said,
“I work with Thunder Beings.
They like my game.”
2.
Four months ago, the nightly news reported
Scientists have found a whole world above the clouds
when a thunder storm gathers.
Energy Formations like giant jelly fish roam the upper regions—
these they called elves. Small bundles of energy climb their legs;
these they called trolls. Other being flash blue and orange.
These they called gnomes. Life on earth, they think, might have come from the elves since their energy is light enough to ignite existences,
unlike the heavier lightning in the lower realms that we see today.
In the very beginning, Elves may once have roamed the dark waters of our planet
sparking life seeds.
3.
During summer, thunder throws its weight around my city.
Car sirens moan and echo
about being raided by air.
And our streets become waterways.
Last August rain I wanted a piece of this show:
Wanted to soak my clothes,
dance around in the downpour,
fury like Lear ,
satisfying both the poet and the practical in me.
But suddenly it stopped.
The merest lick of lightning and the trees were still.
Gutters and drains gurgled the end.
A cricket sounded.
Ambulances called out
Who’s hurt? Who’s not?
And I’d missed it, again.
But in the rain’s game,
it was not over.
A branch of light came up from the ground.
Another diagonaled the sky.
Trees leaves rattled
And the multi rain canes came down,
Drilling, drumming, drubbing
glass, wood, ground.
I do not have the sense of my cat
who cried from inside,
‘Come in, now. Now!’
I descended the stairs to feel
what the roofs know and the grass.
I wanted rain pelleting my skin,
to spin showers from my arms like steel feathers,
whirl what is left of me into waters older than earth,
be liquefaceted into those thunder realms now...
4.
Thunderclouds bigger than buildings,
Godzilla buffaloes turned their heads east
And shouldered the sky,
crossed over trees, high risers,
as we sat at the window
tasting multi textured Thai food.
“Save the flurried slick mushroomed salad for later,”
My husband suggested and we dodged the rain
into the crystal and rock store named “Heaven and Earth,”
where I bought a handful of healing stones.
“The stones like you,” Bob, the East Indian owner said.
“They are warm from your palm.”
And we road the rain roads home
where we heard on the answering machine
a voice saying my 92 year old mother was being
sent to the emergency room
of Edgewater Hospital.
For two weeks, my mother had been seeing a daily vision of angels
and the virgin in the yard
across from her nursing home room.
She sat in her bathroom on the throne and opened the window
to watch angels point to the sky where the white
veiled, blue gowned lady looked at her and said nothing.
Angels gathered, crossed the sky like Ezekiel’s wheel until
the rumbling in mom’s head made her lie down to sleep.
That night, the unseen thunderbeing, a pin stroke
in her brain sent signals to her eyes, to other
places we only had heard about though symptoms, through angels.
In bed, as she prayed her beads for the visions to return,
I placed the healing stones
in a circle.
Outside her hospital room that night, it all turned into rain.
5.
Back at the home, my mother pulls me close,
“Tell no body--
the angels have come back.
I don’t want to go
where the wackos go.”
So, at 10 o’clock at night
silently, secretly,
multitudes of angels still come to Schubert Avenue
where they wait for the veiled lady
to appear under the white garden trellis.
6.
Tonight, in November,
ever so softly,
ever so quietly,
thunderbeings
whisper a name
and change the game
to snow.
Sunbear of the Ojibway nation
would send us to choose stones
for the cardinal points on the medicine wheel
that stood for how it all works.
We called to the north that he named Waboose.…………
We called to the south that he named Shawnodese………..
We called to the west that he named Mudjekeewis………….
And we called to the east that he named Wabun………..
Unused to personing directions or elements or the unseen
(except when we were kids
or when we heard our dads trip
on a rock that they cursed over its intent to kill them),
we played along with the medicine man.
But after the calling of each strange name,
what always came
was the rain--
one, two, three, four and more times than chance.
We asked Sunbear why and he said,
“I work with Thunder Beings.
They like my game.”
2.
Four months ago, the nightly news reported
Scientists have found a whole world above the clouds
when a thunder storm gathers.
Energy Formations like giant jelly fish roam the upper regions—
these they called elves. Small bundles of energy climb their legs;
these they called trolls. Other being flash blue and orange.
These they called gnomes. Life on earth, they think, might have come from the elves since their energy is light enough to ignite existences,
unlike the heavier lightning in the lower realms that we see today.
In the very beginning, Elves may once have roamed the dark waters of our planet
sparking life seeds.
3.
During summer, thunder throws its weight around my city.
Car sirens moan and echo
about being raided by air.
And our streets become waterways.
Last August rain I wanted a piece of this show:
Wanted to soak my clothes,
dance around in the downpour,
fury like Lear ,
satisfying both the poet and the practical in me.
But suddenly it stopped.
The merest lick of lightning and the trees were still.
Gutters and drains gurgled the end.
A cricket sounded.
Ambulances called out
Who’s hurt? Who’s not?
And I’d missed it, again.
But in the rain’s game,
it was not over.
A branch of light came up from the ground.
Another diagonaled the sky.
Trees leaves rattled
And the multi rain canes came down,
Drilling, drumming, drubbing
glass, wood, ground.
I do not have the sense of my cat
who cried from inside,
‘Come in, now. Now!’
I descended the stairs to feel
what the roofs know and the grass.
I wanted rain pelleting my skin,
to spin showers from my arms like steel feathers,
whirl what is left of me into waters older than earth,
be liquefaceted into those thunder realms now...
4.
Thunderclouds bigger than buildings,
Godzilla buffaloes turned their heads east
And shouldered the sky,
crossed over trees, high risers,
as we sat at the window
tasting multi textured Thai food.
“Save the flurried slick mushroomed salad for later,”
My husband suggested and we dodged the rain
into the crystal and rock store named “Heaven and Earth,”
where I bought a handful of healing stones.
“The stones like you,” Bob, the East Indian owner said.
“They are warm from your palm.”
And we road the rain roads home
where we heard on the answering machine
a voice saying my 92 year old mother was being
sent to the emergency room
of Edgewater Hospital.
For two weeks, my mother had been seeing a daily vision of angels
and the virgin in the yard
across from her nursing home room.
She sat in her bathroom on the throne and opened the window
to watch angels point to the sky where the white
veiled, blue gowned lady looked at her and said nothing.
Angels gathered, crossed the sky like Ezekiel’s wheel until
the rumbling in mom’s head made her lie down to sleep.
That night, the unseen thunderbeing, a pin stroke
in her brain sent signals to her eyes, to other
places we only had heard about though symptoms, through angels.
In bed, as she prayed her beads for the visions to return,
I placed the healing stones
in a circle.
Outside her hospital room that night, it all turned into rain.
5.
Back at the home, my mother pulls me close,
“Tell no body--
the angels have come back.
I don’t want to go
where the wackos go.”
So, at 10 o’clock at night
silently, secretly,
multitudes of angels still come to Schubert Avenue
where they wait for the veiled lady
to appear under the white garden trellis.
6.
Tonight, in November,
ever so softly,
ever so quietly,
thunderbeings
whisper a name
and change the game
to snow.