Budding by Patricia Zylius

Evening on Relda Street. The back yard hummed
with summer. Tomatoes perked
after the day’s heat, the air easier now.
Mom with her tea, Dad with scotch and soda
idled past the beetle-nibbled hedge,
the blown Peace rose.

                    Then the sun suddened
through the clouds, rays showering earthward.
That’s God I said. I saw what smiled silently
between my parents — mistaken, childish.
Though I had barely reached the age
of reason, I knew what I knew.
Those rays christened me. I swam them
into metaphor.

— from Juniper Volume 6, Issue 2