Seed Bank for Thunder

In the museum of weather, I carry a tin of seeds— not for corn but for rumble, for the dark silk of rain. The docent dusts a lightning rod with a fox tail, and the air smells of iron and wet fences.

Across the prairie, the wind is a long violin, its bow drawn by grasses that never learned to sit. Clouds gather like towns at dusk, lights flickering on, each porch a horizon, each door a low horizon.

I plant the seeds in a jar of noon, set it on the windowsill where heat hums. By evening, thunder sprouts, green and unruly, rooting in the gutters, climbing the attic stairs.

When it breaks, the sky opens like a throat. Every plank, every windowpane learns its own name. We stand in the bright rinse of it, rinsed and renamed, keeping the tin for the next quiet season.