Sunday, October 22, 2006
Rain, Again
1. Love.
Tangled in the rain,
a soaking rain,
the king’s rain,
working its way down
from the sky’s rafters,
taking care not to make mud,
not to be part of the first frost.
2. Rain.
Doesn’t want to parent plants;
Doesn’t want to be sealed away in leaf or stem,
its plant the earth
its roots the ocean’s deepest trenches—
scars left behind when crusty plates parted ways;
Doesn’t want to know what tearing feels like—
not a tear in th’eye
not a root chopped up
to make way for
the highway it will hit hard
as it plummets back to earth
shattering
bouncing in all directions at once.
3. Stars.
Have so much influence
making rain jealous
the way they hang up there
lookin bright
here they are now they are
miles and miles ago
years and years away
reaching out with pure, cold light
always traveling at top speed
never frozen
not recordable in inches
not beholden to any sun
(they are the sun)
unaware of gravity
worthy of telescopes
imprisoned only by tiny, black holes rain can’t see
as rain falls to earth looking back out at space
about to glaze a world still hot with war
a world not yet cataclysmic
but shaky—
a world on plates
five choices on rain’s menu
meteorolgists looking on
rain trying to prove them wrong.
4. Clouds.
From cirrus above—
ice crystals, a smear of ice cream, the mare’s tail
swishing in the breeze, waving to the mackerel sky
not a bad way to be water, until it gets too heavy, and then—
to cirrus below—
not ice crystals
but a slender appendage
the sea-star’s foot
a tube, a sucker
a way to cling to boats
to burrow down
beneath th’ocean
beneath the five sliding continents
to hack into the main flame
a suicide run
a way to be burned
to lose maidenhood, nationhood—
its citizenship in the state of liquid;
to be launched from the geyser
as steam
to return to heaven a gas.
5. Rain, Again.
It shouldn’t have to explain itself.
Icebergs and glaciers are packed with explanations
(that’s why ice floats on water)—
icy words take eons to unwind,
sinking ships, sucking in the sea,
scouring land to carve hill and valley,
picking up a rock and setting it down
five miles away, five hundred years later.
Rain doesn’t need that pressure;
Rain doesn’t wish to keep cities alive;
Rain says, One drop more, and my storm might be gone,
this river would cease to be a river
instead: just a pebbled path leading nowhere
instead: a desert / dryness not my legacy /
not my issue when other rain won’t fall.
I can’t wait around here on the surface
when shrinking aquifers gasp for my presence
when ocean trenches fall deeper every second
taking me down
to the underground sea
to the crushed, condensed pearl of nickel
that blesses my forehead, magnetizes my members
and brings me back
once every seven million years.
