In Favor of Lightning

In Retrospect, the Sky

In Retrospect, the Sky Heaven was always a little to the north of our lives, an invisible star in transit above our dinner table. And if, for years at a time there was silence at that end, it was only because God was a distracted man, probably poring over his work much like my own father. It was important to remember that though we were alone in our sorrow, pain, like a shadow, did nothing to distinguish us. My knees touched my sister's and I prayed for the safe return of a plane carrying my mother, I prayed for an athlete's body, and then I prayed to stop sinning. 3 It had everything to do with timing. Still, each night I slept to one side of the bed making room for the angel of the lord, imagining our encounter and knowing it would be nothing like I imagined, but more like the first crude kiss in summer, my back pressed against a road sign. Much later it happened. I lay on my back in a field. The tiny, light blue stars were there hovering in clusters like mosquitos and the angel's face was tan and warm. He had a mustache and he drifted quietly over me, then hurried away leaving nothing, not even a secret path, only the green weeds that whispered and went on. 4 In a car years later, my mother turned and said, there must not be a God. Or he was deaf or callous. She wasn't serious but her clear voice and the way she talked out the window— I thought she could see something out there, something beneath the neat, dry rows of corn. 5 ...