in rain. A blur, like another language is
a mix of color
that runs and spills. I do not look down
but across into tops of giant trees
where birds come back
year after year with straw in their beaks.
Is that permission, a premonition?
To talk so pointedly
in rain’s bedraggled and dogged is to
remember what it is
to walk soaked through,
sorry for each other and then yourself
and then the world.
A vacant lot, an empty
street to cross and get—yes, soaked
is the word. No one, and no control of it.
The sky. And clouds, if they want.
Voices. The human sick-at-heart
flares up: a sudden
Anglo-Saxon pierce and glint—
you do not!
