This short poem that also is suggestive of metaphorical meanings (I hope) refers to the phenomenon of lightning that may be so distant on a far horizon that from where you stand you don't hear the thunder.
To quote meteorologist Jeff Haby http://www.theweatherprediction.com/habyhints/274/ If a lightning strike is a sufficient distance from the observer, sound from the strike will not be heard. These silent bolts are called heat lightning. Lightning bolts produce thunder, but the thunder sound does not travel all the way to the observer if the observer is too far away...The term "heat" in heat lighting has little to do with temperature. Since heat lightning is most likely to be seen in association with air mass thunderstorms in the warm season, the term "heat" may have been used because these flashes are often seen when surface temperatures are warm.
The poem was written after watching such a display lighting up the far clouds.
SILENT LIGHTNING
A
silent lightning flickers light upon
a
patch of clouded night.
The
quiver of detailing white upon
the
sequence of the shadow sight
throws
glowing, evanescent images from
the
darkened generality.
A
second's insight and the flash is free
to
shock its shaking path from gathered thought:
that
sudden and creative insight caught
when
blaze of swift and dancing light is born
upon
a once-unknown horizon's form.
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