Ragnarök

Father, you handed me the rough sphere
about the size of a tennis ball.
In my small hands, I turned it over.
You took it, placed it on concrete,
struck like Thor with your heavy sledge.

It was, you said, a thunderegg,
or might be. You loved Oregonian
geology, the tide pools and lava flows.
This disappointing specimen
crumbled like ash under your blows.

No frozen moonscape/seascape/
landscape inside, no milky eye.
You gave a sigh and turned
for a swig of beer, a rare one,
then crushed the empty can in your hand.

We lived, that year, across the rush
of traffic, from a park
with civic tennis courts,
swings, and childish slides,
frequent thunk-thunk of hit balls.

They look ordinary, you’d explain.
Not agate or geode exactly but some
mysterious matrix of confluence
from those firey thrusts of the dim past,
the slow drip of underground rivers…

You’d tell the tale you did not
remember—pale mammal, scientist,
half-blind like Odin—as if you were there,
and I can still see you, hefting your lightning,
striding the now-riven world.

            Leslie Schultz

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