This Is Not a Poem

That day we argued about whether lightning causes thunder
Or vice versa.
The two phenomena always accompanying each other,
Inseparable. We cannot intervene in the causal chain
To tease them apart.

You said that the word lightning has two meanings.
The visual evidence of the thing (the flash of light),
And the thing itself,
Which rends the sky.

The flash of light does not cause the thunder,
It precedes it only because light is faster.
They are but outward manifestations
Of a thing that is by itself inscrutable,
Not susceptible to our direct observation.
(It is not a flash of light.)
Our minds held at bay by an impenetrable wall,
We know it only by its signs.

When we made love, we did what humans do,
And ignored for a moment the thin latex barrier that is always between us.
We confused the signs of love with the thing itself.
Our fast-beating hearts, the raindrops rolling down windowpanes,
The lightning and the thunder.