when a tree is struck by lightning electricity will pass from its tip to toe, in the moist vessels under its bark split its bark outwards in one loud crack burn that which was wet in the rings inside the contour topography of its years. when a tree is struck by lightning a purple-white flash will find ground through its roots kill it immediately a tree, whole within unstable seconds but it will take years for the decay to show for a tree to become rotten wood. when a tree is struck by lightning a temperature five times hotter than the sun shall shock it; this duration will be nothing, in its large life but enough amperes to change it from an object of biology to an object of physics. green leaves, will still live after the thunderstorms the flash fires the electrocution, and the communication from a cloud; for a while. things are not really understood until the right metaphors arrive. i have thought of many: driftwood in a river, snowflake ...
Mostly I brush life off my shoulder when it falls gently from a tree, or when it grows from my shirt like lint. Mostly i sigh it away like a laugh from an unfounded joke or a waft of extra air in speech. Except sometimes.