Today the rain
is an aged man
a gray old man
a curious old man
in a music store
Today houses
are strings of a harp
soprano harp strings
bass harp strings
in a music store
The ancient man
strums the harp
with thin long fingers
attentively picking
a weary jingle
a soft jazzy jangle
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain--and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
The rain to the wind said
‘You push and I’ll pelt.’
They so smote the garden bed
That the flowers actually knelt,
And lay lodged--though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.
All day I'd been tracking along the Monon in search
of some sign of spring, but only once had come across
Kentucky blue grass curling up a dormant poplar's trunk
and small purple flowers dotting a crushed lawn.
Then,
this one prize.
A cardinal, a preacher!
& then a little cold rain fell.
On this rainy afternoon
while I walk alone the streets
the music that my shoes make
on the wet asphalt
sounds to my ears
like a funeral symphony
and my walk like a dead march.
Casually raising my eyes
to the mountain in front me
I notice that the white cloud
which in the morning
was kissing the mountain
is there no more.
So, I say to myself;
‘these wet drops falling
are not the rain drops,
The field and I had cut our hair
last afternoon.
We had a shower by rain
last night.
Today, the field was woken up
by a kiss of the rainbow
Me, by my mother’s
phone call.
I am my home,
my real estate.
Memory contests the deed
and title, would
force me to live
in recall, a phantom
condominium of fate.
I am the shack
of me, a self with rooms,
a past out back,
an attic that looms,
a pantry with brooms.
This is why blankets
at 4:13 a.m. feel
(why rain badgering
roof over the roof
Roadlake rushes to pour
its pools onto the pathways.
Mercury-mirrors dot them
imaging the trees' dark sway.
after the rainstorm
all of the old gravestones
still dull gray
light spring rain &
green lichen on the roof
of the birdhouse
And so you woke and wondered
and were afraid last night alone
pitched into considerations of who and if
and if there is a home
any are quiet in.
“It is sincerely to be hoped
that these childish recycles of worry
won’t be repeated often.”
The windows are tin.
There has been no rain in Tokyo for 57 days.
The city, you are told, is like a tinder box.
You fool romantics dwell
on painful, passionate ends.
I thought it
was you
turning in bed—listening
I know
it is just the rain, heavier.
First I’ve heard
in a long time—
breathe deep.
I rest easier.
Happily.
Floods?
I doubt it,
if so
we'll cope later,
in due time.