A storm starts, flashing lightning, thunder, heavy rain, and somehow, still, I hear the chorus of peepers, think of clouds moving over the land between us. My grandmother said lightning was good for plants, would carry pots out to the porch to charge their particles. I wait for one of us to say something, flash-imagine a lightning-strike, my grandmother in her housedress, lashed by wind, trying-tending-loving into growth. I worry for the tender shoots of what you’re feeling, what will bloom. Peepers time their breeding to coincide with rain or cloudy weather, fix their eggs like seed pearls to a blade of pond grass. Here, having heard their voices, I imagine their eyes lit, glowing for a fraction of a second after each white bolt-flash. In this swirl of love and fear, nurturing and growth, even the species map is darker in the places where we are, these little frogs with crosses on their backs call out for someone. Let me move across this distance, I hope is only ever geographic, light the darkness with some brilliant shape.