Yesterday, an oppressive storm hung over the sky, and I hurried to a neighboring hill...At the top of the hill I found a hut, where a man was killing two goats while his son watched him. The storm broke, with a tremendous crash, discharging thunder and hail, and I had an indescribable sense of well-being and zest...Lightning and tempest are different worlds, free powers, without morality. Pure Will, without the confusions of intellect—how happy, how free."

Nietzsche, in a letter to a friend, 1865

When you're five, if you let go of an emerald green balloon

and you watch it getting small as it ascends into the sky—

and if a storm's about to break and you can hear the clouds in marbled veins of cream,

and if the sky tastes dark gray more than light—

and if the dark gray sky can turn the branches black,

and orchid-color shoots can set the redbud trees on fire  

if this happens when you're five and you let go of a balloon,

now you hear the blood of goats run red in a lightning crack,

you taste emeralds and see thunder in the sky;

you are the hilltop you were standing on before,    

as you ascend, you are smaller to the eye.