It seizes your nostrils with a
sweet, pungent zing—a hit
of oxygen that arrives before
the rain,

an electrical charge splitting
nitrogen and oxygen molecules
with an atmospheric ax,

and though you don’t think of it
as ozone (which it is) your brain
may flash with a headline:

Rain on the way, likely
a thunderstorm,

thanks to three oxygen atoms
named for the Greek ozein
(to smell)—not unlike

the zing of recognition when
a stranger comes into view,
one destined to become

beloved, and somehow you
feel that in the air, inhaling
a whiff of possibility

just before the lightning strikes.