Turned on by storms

Before they had the world explained to them, our ancestors believed

that storms were caused by the gods fighting, but did they ever consider

the gods fucking—the racket they’d make, as if the world wasn’t watching.

We are walking, pulled into evening by the itch of something happening—

the wind rising to swallow the civet odour of an overripe summer—

the moon snuffed and steaming under a pile of damp clouds.

Lightning flickers like a television left on in another room—

we keep turning, too slow to see the show till at last it breaks loose

over the scrubby silhouette of the hills—the full drama of weather.

And we break loose then too, running, shrieking like teenagers—

kissing under the wooden fort by the sports field with our hands inside

one another’s clothes. This could be the last fort of its era

which is also my era—could be my last chance to play on a playground

that was around during my own childhood. What is this feeling

of being old and young at the same time—of living, dying, oh, all at once?

A small man is running laps—one fast, one slow. His headlamp lights us up

then eclipses us. He seems totally unaware of what’s happening overhead

and over here—my feet soaking in my lilac Chuck Taylors and my face hot

and the sky pulsing like a thin skin over the busy organ of the universe.

Everything around us charging, and us the spark which sets it all alight.

And this is how I know that we are gods too, at least for tonight.

Hannah Mettner is a Wellington-based poet from Tūranganui-a-Kiwa. Her first collection, Fully Clothed and so Forgetful (VUP 2017), was longlisted for the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, and won the Jessie Mackay Award for best first book of poetry. With Sugar Magnolia Wilson and Morgan Bach, she is one of the founding editors of Sweet Mammalian. A new collection is forthcoming from THWUP in 2023.