and when I saw the heavens open

[gurdonark]

I drove my dull white unwashed car
down undistinguished country roads,
past paper signs pasted on stakes which
advertised sprawling new brick homes built, and
new roads with names like "Gryphon Meadow",
past horses grazing tamely on prairie remnants.

The sky was blue with weather channel brilliance,
as the radio buzzed--flash flood, bent fender.
I turned beside a convenience store,
past an abandoned nursery, a closed barbecue,
onto a stretch of straight farm-to-market road.

Before me, just ahead, the clouds parted,
as if some religious painting come to life,
a burst of sunlight, a new revelation,
pierced through clouds of blue and purple,
pierced the empty sky and endless drizzle,
landed, as if a targeted laser beam,
illuminating a blue junker truck in a field,
as if it were a saint, but no voice of God spoke.
I drove home, alone, under dark clouds.