and the scent of the thunder;
you’ll tell me it’s ozone broken by forked
lightning, but thunder has a smell
of its own:
heavy and green, pregnant with wildflowers.
The clouds pressed through our roof,
drowning a protestant sun; it was one
of those evenings I wished for a bee sting
one of those evenings when heat rises
and I am overly alive, when I’m breathing
in too much summer to stem the panic.
And the weight of your body
on mine did nothing
and the restless sweat escaping
my pores did not cool me down—
but when night fell, the owls sheltered
from the hot rain in graveyard trees
and I wandered beneath their calls
to calm the tremors.
Kate Garrett is a writer, mother, editor, wife, history buff, and amateur folklorist. Her work is published here and there online and in print, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her most recent books are The Density of Salt (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2016) – which was longlisted for best pamphlet in the 2016 Saboteur Awards – and Deadly, Delicate (Picaroon Poetry, 2016). Her next pamphlet, You’ve never seen a doomsday like it, will be published in 2017 by Indigo Dreams. Kate lives in Sheffield with her husband, four children, and a cat named Mimi.
Foxglove Journal 