Underwater Lightning
Henry Hughes
Crazy crippled Smitty, the janitor
hooped in gold keys,
wheeled his green barrel through the hall.
It’s garbage, kids. Learn something.
Get up in the world.
The school buzzed about Bayside’s beached whale
and the dramatic Coast Guard rescue. It was 1977,
we listened to marine-channel reports on a black CB radio.
The whale is swimming normally now, the teacher said,
her smile tight and red. She’s heading out to sea.
To an endless lunch period
of macaroni and krill, recess in the big pool,
while we studied America
and electricity, filling notebooks with stories
our fire-fearing mothers
sealed in tin safes.
There were good distractions that day: first the whale, then a storm
swirling leaves and lost dittoes ‘round the darkening yard.
Then Lightning,
and the Poseidon-rattle of thunder.
Can we draw lightning? I asked.
Underwater lightning, Evan cried,
flipping the world in his bright stupidity. Hermit crabs flashing
between shells, deep sea anglers embarrassed by their looks.
Whales are very intelligent, the teacher evenly resumed.
So I thought maybe those broad-brained giants would enjoy lightning—
like Ben and his kite
charging science with ungrounded ideas
encased in blubber and bone.
Any more questions about the whale? the teacher asked.
If whales are so smart, Evan yelled, how’d we kill them all?
Well, the teacher began—What if the whale’s struck by lightning? I interrupted.
The barnacled genius
burning like an oil lamp
under a news chopper.
Lightning strikes high things, she said. And I wondered
what that meant to a whale, sounding
the blue grades of the sea,
while we watched Smitty get up on the roof
to secure our wind-wild antenna,
our very exciting day.