Steam From the Asphalt

When I was a child,
the rain felt different.

I would stand in the
summer storms, and
let them soak me deeply.

Denim shorts, almost
white hair – tow-headed,
I remember how it felt
when the steam rose from the
asphalt to warm my ankles.

My young mind didn’t
understand the adventure ahead,
but I stood and stared
down the road, and saw
stories in the curls of steam.

The elders must have thought
me diminished, but the summer
storm never ended, instead,
it rolled into my soul,
where the steam rose from
my fiery heart, a release,
but it beat ever-harder.

Now I know the secret
of those summer storms…

they are life-bringers,

the soul-cleansers,

the washers-away of the filth that hides the seed.

It took forty years, but it
seeped into the hidden places
where my soul’s need unfurled
and reached for the Sun.

I am alive…

the past is undone.

©️ Obol, 2018-19, from the vault.

Yes, that’s actually a picture of me. I think it’s probably sometime in 1975.