Tabula Rasa: A Poem to Childhood

I’d been reading Locke in my room,

trying to sense of it for a paper due,

when suddenly the day went dark

and a distant rumble drew my eyes

to a line of storm clouds advancing

from the west, blotting out the sun.

Lightning flashed – the window shook.

Homework forgotten, I watched the show.

Something there is about a storm

that seizes the mind and thrills the heart:

the lashing rain, the electric sky –

the wind that roars like the sea.

Afterward I ran out into the newborn light

that revealed the world fresh and dripping

like a naked child raised from the font.

Appears in the Winter 2020 "Childhood" edition of The Poet Magazine