Orrin Schwab's poem recounts a lightning strike that kills a fifteen-year-old boy standing under a tree beside a soccer field. It begins almost like a report, with the speaker relaying what "they said" about the bolt's color and power, and comparing it to a samurai sword. The language of science and violence is vivid but distant.
Then the poem slows down and looks at the boy himself: his reddish hair, his searching eyes, his face caught between child and man. He is simply waiting for the rain to stop. That ordinary detail makes the sudden flash feel even crueler. The poem stretches the fraction of a second into images like a butterfly's breadth and a flicker on the retina.
The speaker seems stunned and sorrowful, reflecting that a life is only a "flickering" in an infinite world. The final lines turn to the grieving family and a loss with "no reason." The mood is quiet, shocked, and heavy with the unfairness of it.