Heat Lightning

Is just normal lightning

That’s too far away

For the rain and thunder

To reach. I always thought

It was a magical kind of summer storm:

All the marvelous light with

None of the dreary consequences.

I was just as disappointed to learn

That shooting stars are also a misnomer.

They’re just fast rocks near Earth (another mere rock).

Nobody shot them out a cosmic gun; they

Aren’t even stars. They don’t have ears to hear

our wishes. We’re whispering to the dark like

a herd of mystified morons.

Scientists I’ve never met informed me that love is

simply a cloud of tiny stuff called oxytocin that

leaks out a pea-sized gland in my brain.

I always believed it was beyond me, like some

invisible gravitational tug toward transcendence.

But nope.

What in the hell do I do with all this pent-up awe?