Ryan Jessup

Lightning in Autumn

reading Leaves of Grass with a slow trickling of rain and distant thunder not long after midnight when I find there is never enough time to experience all the great creations of this world

for as Whitman says I contain multitudes and there is never enough time to even know myself

and so I pour another drink and go out on the porch to smoke a cigarillo and watch the flashes of lightning perform through the cool November sky

heavy wind
the stillness of ashes
in a small clay bowl          

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Ryan Jessup is a husband, father, and poet. He lives with his family in the foothills of North Carolina.